Bihar land acquisition officer’s houses raided, property worth crores revealed

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A VIB official said a case of disproportionate assets has been lodged and preliminary probe suggests that Gupta bought property with ill-gotten money. (Getty Images/iStockphoto/Representative use)

The Bihar government’s Vigilance Investigation Bureau (VIB) on Saturday raided houses and office of a district land acquisition officer in Rohtas district, suspecting him to be in possession of assets worth ₹90 lakhs disproportionate to income but managed to discover his property holdings that alone were estimated close to ₹10 crore, officials aware of the developments said.

Verification of various ownership documents of the officer’s movable and immovable properties was carried out at his lavish parental house at Forbesganj in Araria district apart from two flats in Patna and his office chamber at Sasaram (Rohtas). The roughly 18 hours long raids were carried out through search warrants issued by the special judge, Vigilance, Patna.

The land acquisition officer is identified as Rajesh Kumar Gupta, a 1996 batch Bihar administrative service officer, who currently holds additional charge of Sasaram municipal commissioner.

VIB said it also recovered ₹22 lakh in cash, five gold bars, a gold pen worth ₹46,000, jewellery worth ₹61.67 lakh, 25 passbooks, six ATMs cards, two lockers apart from land and plot related documents during the raids. The department claims that the seized documents indicate that Gupta owned more than six flats in Patna, 1.30 acre land in Purnia besides 55,000 square feet land in Ranchi. The estimated value of flats and land is roughly estimated to be around ₹10 crore, in absence of exact valuation, a VIB official said on condition of anonymity.

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“The price of land in those areas is very high and what Gupta owns may cost several crores of rupees,” the official mentioned above added.

The VIB official said a case of disproportionate assets has been lodged and preliminary probe suggests that Gupta bought property with ill-gotten money. Gupta could not be contacted for his comments on the raids.

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