Rajkot: A special Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) court in Rajkot has sentenced a retired income tax officer to four years of rigorous imprisonment in a seven-year-old bribery case involving ₹15,000.

Special ACB Judge V.K. Bhatt also imposed a ₹1 lakh fine on the 66-year-old convict, Maulesh Mehta. Failure to pay the fine will attract an additional six months of simple imprisonment.

The case dates back to March 2019, when Mehta was posted at the Income Tax office in Rajkot. He allegedly demanded ₹20,000 from share broker Amit Joshi to settle an income tax return issue for FY 2011–12. The amount was later negotiated to ₹15,000, which Mehta accepted in his office on March 12, 2019.

Joshi secretly recorded the conversations and later filed a complaint with the ACB in Ahmedabad. A forensic voice analysis confirmed the identities of those involved, and the prosecution relied on electronic evidence and witness testimony to secure conviction.

On February 27, the court convicted Mehta under Section 7(a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (amended in 2018), while acquitting him under Section 13(2).

Rejecting the defence plea for leniency on health and age grounds, the court observed that corruption by a public servant seriously harms society. Mehta’s bail was cancelled, and he was taken into custody. DeshGujarat