Who is Aditya Saurabh? Cracked UPSC with impressive AIR, became IRS officer, now arrested for...

In a big crackdown on officers accepting bribes, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has arrested IRS officer Aditya Saurabh and Income Tax Inspector Manish Kumar Pankaj along with multitasking staff Shubham Raj. India's premier investigative agency arrested the officers for allegedly taking a bribe of Rs 2 lakh for releasing seized money of a person, officials said Wednesday. They will be sent to jail after the court’s verdict.

Who is IRS officer Aditya Saurabh?

Aditya Saurabh is a 2021 batch IRS officer and is an Assistant Commissioner at the Patna Income Tax Office. He passed the UPSC Civil Services exam in 2020 with an All India Rank (AIR) of 391 and was chosen from the OBC category. The charge on Aditya Saurabh is that of demanding a bribe of Rs 3 lakh from a multinational company in Hyderabad. He was caught taking Rs 2 lakh. Along with him, Income Tax Inspector Manish Kumar Pankaj and staff member Shubham Raj were also taken into custody.

What is the case?

The CBI acted on a complaint alleging that Indian Revenue Service officer Aditya Saurabh, posted as Assistant Director of Income Tax (Investigation), and I-T Inspector Manish Kumar Pankaj were demanding a bribe to release Rs 13 lakh seized from a relative of the complainant at the Patna airport. Besides Saurabh and Pankaj, the agency also arrested Shubham Raj, a multi-tasking staffer in the I-T Department, in connection with the case, the officials said.

The two officers had allegedly assured the complainant that all further proceedings would be dropped if the bribe is paid to them. Upon getting the complaint, the CBI tasked a sub-inspector to verify the allegations covertly. The CBI found prima facie material in the complaint during the verification done on Tuesday, following which the agency conducted a raid at the premises where the bribe was to be paid, the officials said.

“CBI laid a trap and apprehended the accused individuals red-handed while accepting the bribe. During the operation, the agency recovered the bribe money of Rs 2 lakh, which was collected at the direction and on behalf of the accused IRS officer. Searches were conducted on July 15 at three different places of accused persons in Patna,” an agency spokesperson said in a statement. 

(With inputs from PTI)