Agri minister bribe row: CID meets officials

NT Correspondent

Mandya | Mysuru | Bengaluru: Two days after a letter, allegedly written by Agriculture Department assistant directors complaining against Minister N Chaluvarayaswamy surfaced, a CID team began its investigation in Mandya on Wednesday.

The team headed by Inspector-General (IG) Praveen Madhukar-Pawar paid a visit to the Agriculture Department Joint Director (JD) VS Ashok at the latter’s office located in the premises of the Mandya Deputy Commissioner’s (DC’s) office.

The letter which surfaced on Monday claimed that the minister had demanded bribes anywhere between Rs 6 lakh and Rs 8 lakh from them.

This was followed by Chaluvarayaswamy himself demanding that a probe be conducted. Later on, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah claimed that the letter was fake, adding that Ashok had denied that assistant engineers had written the letter.

He even floated the theory that BJP and its allies had fabricated the letter but conceded that he would order a probe. Madhukar-Pawar and his team also held talks with the seven assistant engineers who allegedly wrote the letter for an extended period.

Superintendent of Police (SP) of Mandya district N Yatish took part in the questioning. It is not clear whether they admitted to writing the letter or not.

JD Ashok also informed the CID IG that the letter was posted from Saraswathipuram post office in Mysuru. Upon learning this, the team visited the relevant post office for verification on the very same day.