An engineer of the Municipal Corporation of Nizamabad Ch. Venkateswarlu, who was caught by the Anti-Corruption Bureau while accepting a bribe, committed suicide by jumping from his fifth floor house at Kanteswar here on Saturday evening.
ACB Deputy Superintendent of Police M. Narender Reddy said the engineer was caught red-handed at his flat where he was staying alone while accepting the bribe in the morning. He was in the custody of ACB at its local office but taken back to his flat around 5.30 p.m. at his request to collect medicines. Three constables accompanied him, but, giving them the slip under the pretext of putting on clothes hung in the balcony, he jumped off, said the Deputy SP. He suffered serious injuries and died on being shifted to hospital. The 54-year-old official is survived by wife Narayanamma, one daughter who was married off and one son, all of whom live in B.N. Reddy colony in Hyderabad. Hailing from Guntur, he had worked in Nalgonda before his transfer to Nizamabad.
The incident created a furore and led to protest by the Mayor, the Deputy Mayor, corporators of both ruling and Opposition parties and official staff before the Government General Hospital where the body of Venkateswarlu was kept for post-mortem.
Accusing ACB sleuths of mishandling the case, the protesters demanded the arrest of Narender Reddy and his sub-ordinates. Mayor Akula Sujatha Srisailam alleged that there was a conspiracy behind the trap of Venkateswarlu who had been working in the corporation for the last 15 months without a blemish.
