Punjab Vigilance Bureau arrests Mohammad Iqbal, Wakf Board rent collector, accepting Rs 3 lakh bribe in Ferozepur; case filed under Corruption Act.

During its campaign against corruption in the state, the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) apprehended Mohammad Iqbal, a rent collector assigned to the Punjab Wakf Board Zira in the district of Ferozepur, red-handed as he accepted a second installment bribe of Rs. 3,00,000.

An official VB spokesperson said today that the complainant lived in the area of Ferozepur, specifically in Gurudwara Singh Sabha Zira. He stated that the complainant had gone to the VB and claimed that the accused rent collector was requesting a bribe of Rs. 5,40,000 to be paid to the senior official in order to grant the complainant possession of the land that Wakf Board Zira had granted them. In this regard, the complainant had already given the accused a token payment of Rs 70,000 as a partial bribe.

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He disclosed that the complainant had already paid the government fees of Rs. 2.98 lakh through checks made out to Waqf Board Zira, which included the rent for the property that would be leased from the board. The VB team had retrieved these checks from the accused rent collector Mohammad Iqbal’s office during the raid.

The spokesperson added that following an initial investigation into the complaint, a VB team from the Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) set up a trap, leading to the accused’s arrest in front of two official witnesses as he accepted a bribe of Rs 3,00,000 as the second installment from the complainant.

In this regard, VB police station EOW, Ludhiana range, has filed a case against the accused under the Prevention of Corruption Act, and additional investigation into this issue is ongoing, he added.