Cops recover Rs 20L from UDD officer

Officials from the anti-corruption bureau (ACB) have recovered additional cash worth '20 lakh from the bank locker of tainted urban development department (UDD) deputy secretary Anandrao Jivne. The amount was recovered following inspection at his Kalyan residence on Saturday where the police had come across a massive cash haul of '78.42 lakh, along with fixed deposits ('21.74 lakh), mutual fund investments '8.40 lakh) and four flats in Mumbai, Pune and Kalyan (collectively worth '46.81 lakh). On Monday, the officers accessed the locker in the name of Jivne’s wife at the Bank of Baroda’s branch at Tisgaon Naka in Kalyan (east). “We have found more cash totalling '20.50 lakh in the locker. This takes Jivne’s asset value to '1.85 crore from '1.64 core. However, searches at the residences of section officer Udaysingh Chavan and stenographer Subhash More has not yielded anything yet,” said additional CP Rameshkumar Mor. While More is a resident of Ambarnath, Chavan lives in Vashi. The trio is currently in police custody on corruption charges and are being interrogated further. “We are examining the possibility of registering a disproportionate assets case against him and will have to compare his income, expenditure and time when the assets were owned,” Mr Mor added. “We will also visit his flat in Pune to check if more cash or documents on other possible assets could be recovered,” said DG (anti-corruption) P.N. Dixit. Meanwhile, officers from the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC), where the complainant was attached, said Chavan was “notorious” for delaying action on files by deliberately pointing out faults.