Punjab Vigilance Bureau Arrests PSPCL Superintendent Engineer for Taking Rs. 15 lakh Bribe, Demanding More Money

Additional Superintendent Engineer (ASE) at PSPCL, Sukhwinder Singh Multani, has been arrested by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) for taking a bribe of Rs. 15 lakh and demanding more money. The evidence against the ASE came in the form of an audio-video recording submitted by the complainant to the Chief Minister’s anti-corruption action line.

Sukhwinder Singh Multani has been arrested by the Vigilance Bureau for taking a bribe of Rs. 15 lakh and asking for Rs. 20 lakh more. Multani was a Punjab State Power Corporation Limited (PSPCL) employee but before that, he was posted as an Executive Engineer (Xen) Technical Audit at PSPCL. According to a spokesperson for VB, the complainant claims that Multani had already taken Rs. 15 lakh as a bribe when he was Xen to send a favorable inspection report of store inventory, but then demanded Rs. 20 lakh more on grounds of getting the complainant reinstatement on the job after being suspended for the stock verification report.

The complainant recorded the entire conversation and shared it with the VB. The VB reviewed the evidence and registered a corruption case against Multani. They found him guilty of taking a bribe of Rs. 15 lakh in three installments and demanding Rs. 20 lakh more from the complainant.

A case under the Prevention of Corruption Act has been registered against the accused officer at VB police station Amritsar and further investigation, in this case, is underway.

This is part of the crackdown on corruption in the VB’s anti-corruption campaign in Punjab. Recently, the VB arrested former Punjab Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot for amassing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income in a disproportionate assets case. The Punjab Vigilance Bureau carried out the arrest after it found Dharamsot had spent 269 percent more than what he made from his known sources of income between 2016 and 2022.

Furthermore, Punjab-based businessman Gautam Malhotra was recently arrested in a money laundering investigation. Gautam who is the son of former SAD MLA and liquor baron Deep Malhotra was among seven people who have been arrested till now in this investigation. The investigation and arrest were carried out by the Enforcement Directorate (ED).

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