Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) arrested two government officials in separate bribery cases in Harda and Sagar districts on Friday.

In the first case, a clerk posted at the RTO office in Harda, Sajjan Singh, was caught red-handed for demanding a bribe of Rs 50,000. The complainant, Surendra Tanwani, a bus operator from Bhopal, had previously paid the cancellation fee for his 15-year-old bus.

However, Singh kept the registration active, forcing Tanwani to pay a monthly tax of Rs 6,600. Singh threatened that if the bribe of Rs 50,000 was not paid, the owner would continue facing monthly charges.

When Tanwani agreed to pay the bribe, he handed over the first installment of Rs 20,000, which led to Singh’s arrest.

A subsequent search at his office revealed Rs 1 lakh in cash. In the second case, Vednarayan Yadav, an assistant reader in the office of the SDM in Malthone, Sagar, was arrested for demanding Rs 50,000 in bribe.

The complainant, Mahendra Kumar Shrivastava, alleged that Yadav had been demanding the bribe to expedite mutation, demarcation and removal of illegal encroachment on his agricultural land.

The case had been pending in the SDM court for over a year. A trap was set, and Yadav was caught red-handed when he accepted the bribe.