Corruption cases come down drastically in State

The Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) has failed to touch its previous years’ mark of registering a good number of disproportionate assets and trap cases (6 and 94 respectively), which have been the lowest in the past six years.

As against a total of 319 cases in 2011 registered by the ACB, just 183 cases were filed in 2012.

In the 94 trap cases in 2012, ACB seized `13.59 lakhs and arrested the officers concerned. In the six DA cases, `41.81 crores of illegal assets were found of which `31 crore alone pertained to Yelamanchili MLA V U Ramana Murthy Raju, which the ACB investigated on the direction of the court.

Apart from Murthy Raju, DA cases were registered against Ripunjaya Reddy, member of APPSC and `4 crore assets were seized from him, `2.48 crore assets was siezed from T Anjana Devi, a Tehsildar in Kurnool district, `2.38 crore assets recovered from Praveen Kumar, Chaitnyapuri police inspector and `1 crore assets seized from S Seshagiri Rao, LD steno of deputy commissioner of prohibition and excise, Guntur.

However, the ACB was in the limelight in 2012 due to two important cases it investigated - Karnataka former minister Gali Janardhan Reddy’s cash for bail scam and liquor syndicate case.

The officials registered 48 cases against the syndicate leaders officers, excise officials and private persons.

Conviction in cases, percentage-wise, was slightly less in 2012 than in 2011, when the the conviction percentage in all cases was 48.94. But in 2012, it fell to 46.03 per cent.  Disciplinary action and dismissal from services of accused officers was 64 in 2011 when compared to 51 in 2012.