Tamil Nadu - Salem   

Vigilance sleuths arrest 18 middlemen

By Our Special Correspondent

SALEM, JAN. 8. The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) personnel arrested 18 middlemen, who illegally operated within the premises of the Offices of Regional Transport Officers in the districts of Salem, Namakkal and Dharmapuri and seized cash to the tune of about Rs. 1.73 lakhs following its simultaneous raids on Friday night.

Acting on a series of complaints from the public, three special teams of DVAC, led by DSPs K. Periyasamy (Salem), L. Panneerselvam (Namakkal) and Durai Muthusamy (Dharmapuri), carried out simultaneous raids on RTO offices in Salem, Namakkal and Dharmapuri on Friday evening.

These teams, apart from seizing cash that remained unaccounted from offices' premises, also seized many incriminating documents. While Namakkal recorded the highest seizure of about Rs. 1.44 lakhs, Salem accounted for Rs. 19,500 followed by Dharmapuri (Rs. 7,500 and odd).

Cases registered

Nine persons from Salem, seven in Namakkal and two from Dharmapuri were arrested. A senior official said that cases under Section 8 of the Prevention of Corruption Act had been registered against them.

Our Namakkal staff reporter writes:

Links to be probed

Sources said that the links between the brokers and some of the staff in the RTO office were being probed and further interrogation of the arrested would yield more information.

The arrested brokers were identified as Vijay alias Angamuthu, Moulana, Natarjan, Sankar, Murugesan, Bhaskaran and Ravikumar.

They were produced today before the Namakkal Chief Judicial Magistrate who remanded them to custody.

The DVAC personnel had also detained two staff members of the RTO's office for further questioning, it is learnt. Several incriminating documents pointing to links between the brokers and some staff members had been seized during the search operations, the sources said.

Around 40 documents such as driving licences, fitness certificate applications and licence renewal forms that were left in a huff by the errant staff and the brokers were also seized during the raid.

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