POKHARA, April 17: One more engineer has been arrested in connection with a bribery case while issuing a certificate of completion of building construction from Pokhara Metropolitan City.
Shiva Raj Baral, an engineer of the Building Design Section of Pokhara Metropolis, was arrested on Tuesday by the Pokhara team of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA).
On April 10, during the issuance of building design certificates for house construction, sub-engineer Usha Kiran Rokaya and Suraj Kunwar of Godar Engineering Consultancy Service were arrested by the CIAA. They were caught red-handed accepting a bribe of Rs 150,000.
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Information Officer Jagdish Siwakoti stated that Baral was also arrested in connection with the same case on Tuesday evening and transferred to the CIAA's central office in Tangal. Investigations revealed that they had accepted bribes repeatedly for the same task.
Siwakoti stated, "Since bribes were taken on multiple occasions and Baral was implicated in the case, he was apprehended and sent to the central office for further investigation. Although Rs 150,000 was seized at the time of arrest, subsequent investigations revealed that bribes had been accepted repeatedly.”
Sub-engineer Rokaya was apprehended in Pokhara-5, Malepatan, while Suraj from Godar Engineering Consultancy Service was detained in Pokhara-4 on April 10.
Sub-engineer Rokaya, who was apprehended accepting a bribe, has been suspended by the metropolis. Godar Engineering Consultancy, led by Mahendra Godar, a long-standing engineer in Pokhara, had its employees implicated in the bribery case.
After taking bribes to expedite the construction of a building for a client of Pokhara Metropolitan City-10, legal proceedings have been initiated against those involved.
