Dy RTO Shailesh Meshram booked for demanding bribe, on the run

MUMBAI: The anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on Thursday registered a bribery case against the Andheri deputy regional transport officer (RTO) after his tout was caught accepting Rs 2,000 as bribe from a transporter. An ACB officer said that while the tout, Sayyed Mohammed Kasam, has been arrested, the dy RTO, Shailesh Meshram, is on the run. Repeated attempts to contact Meshram failed.

The transporter, who maintains a fleet of buses and cabs, approached the Andheri RTO to get special registration numbers for his vehicles. Though he paid the fees, the numbers were not issued to him. He approached Meshram, who demanded Rs 6,000 as bribe for each number and told him to contact Kasam and pay him Rs 2,000 as advance. Instead, the transporter complained to the ACB, which laid a trap.

A transport source said that special registration numbers for vehicles had led to a thriving racket at almost all RTOs. The numbers most sought after are single digits, which are available for Rs1-3 lakh each. Other favorites are numbers like 99, 111, 222 and 4444. The rates for these range from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh. There is also huge demand for numbers with the digits in sequence: 123, 456, 678, etc.