PONDA: Goa Dairy was once again in the news and this time one of its officials was caught red-handed on Monday for allegedly accepting bribe from a Mapusa-based contractor by the ACB sleuths during a raid.
The seven-member ACB team comprising of SP Priyanka Kashyap DySP Suchitra Desai and PI Francis Corte carried out a raid at the Goa Dairy premises and caught Vinayak Dharwadkar, Engineer and Assistant Manager purchase section red-handed while accepting bribe of Rs 50,000 from the Mapusa based Contractor who was awarded tender by Goa Dairy for supplying machinery and power transformers. The raid which was conducted at 4 pm continued till late night.
Commenting on the incident, Goa Dairy MD Navso Sawanth said this is the first time ACB has conducted raid on Goa Dairy and such corrupt staff have tarnished the image of the dairy.
According to Sawanth, Dharwadkar is in charge of National Dairy Development Project (NDDP) of Central Government and handles purchase orders and other dairy affairs. Of total Rs 16 crore approved by Centre, Goa Dairy hàs been sanctioned Rs 8 crore under NDDP for its upgradation.
Through this fund Goa Dairy had on August 14 awarded Rs 67 lakh purchase tender signed with due formalities to Mapusa based contractor Amey Palekar for purchasing machinery and power transformers to set up power substation for Goa Dairy plant.
According to Goa Dairy sources, Dharwadkar insisted that the contractor pay him a bribe of Rs 5 lakh to handover the tender order. It is learnt that the contractor had earlier paid Rs 20, 000 cash as part of first installment and was informed to pay Rs 50,000 on Monday as part payment of total bribe amount. The ACB after getting clues raided Dharwadkar’s cabin and caught him red-handed while accepting bribe.
