Top Income tax official, aide arrested for taking bribe

A top Income Tax official and his Chartered Accountant aide were arrested last night for accepting bribe from a software engineer for giving a closure report in an income tax scrutiny case, CBI officials reported on Saturday. The accused are Ramphool P Meena (51), Commissioner of Income Tax and his aide U P Pai (65) were arrested on Saturday night for demanding and accepting bribe of Rs. 2.20 lakh from a complainant working in a private firm, said Joint Director of CBI, Rishiraj Singh. According to CBI, the 42-year-old software engineer was asked to pay an income tax of Rs.20 lakh for the year 2006-07.  The CBI officials also said that the engineer challenged the order saying his tax liability was wrongly calculated and it worked out only to Rs.9 lakh. The victim had approached Meena a year and a half ago. The Commissioner demanded Rs.10 lakh from his aide Pai for giving the closure report, said Superintendent of Police. The victim was not in a position to pay him the huge bribe when Pai asked him to shell out Rs. 5 lakh. Finally he paid him a bribe of Rs. 2.2 lakhs to get the work done. Subsequently, the victim approached CBI which asked him to go to the IT official's office in South Mumbai with a recorder to record his conversation with Meena and Pai. Reported by         AR