VIGILANCE BUREAU NABS PRIVATE PASSPORT AGENT RED HANDED ACCEPTING BRIBE OF RS 20 THOUSANDS

Face2News/Jalandhsr/Chandigarh

The Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) during its ongoing drive against corruption in the state, has apprehended Hardeep Kaur, a Private Passport Agent based at Jalandhar red handed while accepting a bribe of Rs. 20,000/- for facilitating early issuance of the complainant’s passport through her alleged contacts with officials of the Passport Office, Jalandhar.

Disclosing this here today, an official spokesperson of the state VB said the above-mentioned accused has been arrested based on a complaint lodged by a resident of village Kandola Kurd tehsil Phillaur district Jalandhar.

He said that the complainant had applied for a passport. Thereafter, her police verification was cleared. When she visited the passport office Jalandhar with original documents, the concerned dealing hand told that her police verification regarding passport had not been cleared. When she came out of the passport office, two private passport agents namely NP Singh and Hardeep Kaur approached her outside a booth situated near the passport office. They demanded Rs. 35,000/- for getting her passport issued early without police verification through passport official. The complainant recorded the conversation regarding the demand for the bribe.

Unwilling to pay the illegal gratification, complainant approached the VB Range Jalandhar. Acting on his complaint, the VB team laid a trap during which the accused Hardeep Kaur private passport agent was arrested red handed while accepting bribe money of Rs 20,000/- from the complainant in presence of two official witnesses. Other accused Narinder Pal Singh @ N.P. is yet to be arrested. Apart from this, the role of officials of passport office will be considered during the further investigation

In this regard, a case under prevention of corruption act has been registered against the accused at VB police station Jalandhar and further investigation into this case is under progress.