Mumbai: The bribe was for a file. The file was about a benami property.
The Central Bureau of Investigation arrested income tax inspector Subhash Yadav, posted at Scindia House in Ballard Estate, south Mumbai, while he was allegedly accepting ₹15 lakh from a complainant, the agency said. Yadav had allegedly demanded the money to ensure closure of a case relating to a benami property pending before the department's Benami Prohibition Unit.
The CBI produced Yadav before a court on Wednesday, which remanded him to two days of CBI custody. According to the agency, searches at the premises of the three accused recovered an additional ₹43 lakh in cash and jewellery worth around ₹90 lakh, along with ₹11 lakh in cash and incriminating documents from Yadav's house. Electronic devices were seized for examination.
The sequence, as the CBI described it to the remand court, began in February when the complainant received an income tax notice and attended the Scindia House office, where he submitted his explanation to a senior officer in the presence of Yadav and another inspector. The two inspectors then repeatedly called him, asking him to return for further discussion, met him at the office and took him to a roadside tea stall nearby, where the demand was allegedly made. Reluctant to pay, the complainant approached the CBI, which laid a trap and caught Yadav accepting the money on Tuesday.
The agency told the court that Yadav did not cooperate during questioning and gave evasive replies about the bribe money and others involved. It said it was investigating his work record and his access to confidential information of Benami Prohibition Unit-I, noting that he had been transferred out of that unit in June 2026 and was then working in the investigation wing.
Granting custody, the court recorded that the CBI needed it to investigate the involvement of other accused, examine the seized digital devices and collect a specimen voice sample.
The second inspector named in the complainant's account has not been shown as arrested in the agency's account to the court.