A Damp Squib

The ‘exciting’ operation I had written about in Sunday’s posts turned out to be a damp squib after all, ending in an anti-climax. But I got an opportunity of watching how the long arm of the law catches up with those who think they can get away with anything. It was an anti-corruption operation I was involved in on Monday morning. It was a secret operation and was carried out early in the morning. I went with five cops in a jeep to a house on the outskirts of the city.

On Saturday evening I was asked to report at the office of an anti-corruption office as a mediator. The Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 is the law which catches and punishes those who indulge in corruption in government offices. There is an Anti-Corruption Bureau in the state (AP) which is manned by policemen.

The ACB does two types of operations to catch those who are corrupt. One is the trap where the corrupt employee is caught red handed while accepting a bribe. This is done with lots of prior preparation and in the presence of mediators who are usually government officials. The second type of operation is the searches of the houses of those who have amassed wealth by corrupt means, also called disproportionate assets. The ACB gathers intelligence about the assets, properties, cash possessed by the corrupt employee. A crime is registered and then the ACB moves into action to ferret out the assets etc.

I was part of such a ferreting out operation on Monday as a mediator. We went to the house of the in-laws of an engineer on whom a previous raid revealed disproportionate assets. But we found nothing during the search. However it was a bit of an eye-opener to see how the corrupt also manage to destroy the reputations of their close relatives and friends. When such searches take place in the houses of their relatives and friends it puts them in a humiliating position with cops all over the place, flinging open almirahs and all secret places. I was witness to the effects of such an operation.

Later, during the raid that was taking place simultaneously in four places, some assets were found and the engineer was arrested, and put in custody. I wonder what his young daughter who was present at the house where we went must have felt on learning about her dad’s arrest. I felt sad for her. Her father had managed to destroy a lot of her life by his greed and stupidity.