Six-year wait: IT firm seeks prosecution of Telangana electricity board officer in 2017 bribe case

Hyderabad: Soma Ramalingam, a Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Transdyne IT Services Pvt Limited, Hyderabad, has been fighting for justice for the last six years in connection with an Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) raid that exposed corruption in the Telangana electricity board.

His complaint with the ACB in 2017 led to the arrest of a superintending officer in the Telangana State Southern Power Distribution Company Limited (TSSPDCL). However, an RTI filed by him showed that the officer is yet to be prosecuted.

He has now approached the State government to give orders for a chargesheet and prosecution of the officer for accepting Rs 80,000 as a bribe from the IT company.

Case details

In May 2017, Transdyne IT Services, which had a power connection in the industry category, received a bill of Rs 5.99 lakhs. The company found that it was billed as per commercial rates. Ramalingam approached Shivaji Rathod, the superintendent engineer of TSSPDCL to inform him that the bill amount was generated wrongly for their company. Shivaji Rathod demanded a bribe of Rs 1 lakh for processing the file to change the billing category and remove the penalty of a theft case.

At the request of Ramalingam, the bribe amount was reduced to Rs 80,000. On June 7, 2017, the PRO approached the ACB officials and the next day the electricity department official was caught red-handed while receiving the bribe at an eatery in Khairatabad. Shivaji Rathod was kept in jail for two months.

After six years, on October 7, 2023, Ramalingam filed a Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005 and sought information on the action taken on Shivaji Rathod. Responding to the RTI, the officials stated that ACB sent its final report to the Telangana government on December 30, 2017, recommending the prosecution of the electricity department officer.

Afterwards, appealing to the State government to intervene in the matter, Ramalingam wrote to the then Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekar Rao and governor Dr Tamilisai Soundararajan to release orders recommending prosecution of the accused officer. So far, there has been no response from the government in this regard.

“It has almost been six years since Shivaji Rathod was found to be involved in the crime. I appeal to chief minister A Revanth Reddy and chief secretary Dr A Shanti Kumari to recommend prosecution of the accused officer and do justice to my company,” Ramalingam told NewsMeter.