Gujarat’s Anti-Corruption Bureau arrested three police personnel attached to Bharuch district on July 14-15 after a sting operation caught them accepting Rs 1 lakh, the first of three planned installments, to return a mobile phone seized during a Prohibition Act case. The men, Assistant Head Constables Aniruddh Dhadhal and Jaydeepsinh Parmar and Lok Rakshak Constable Sagar Chavda, were trapped in a container opposite Panoli police station, according to Prokerala/PTI and Udaipur Kiran.
How the case unfolded
The complainant had been arrested under Gujarat’s Prohibition Act and, after securing bail, approached Panoli police to retrieve his phone. Both reports describe the same sequence: Dhadhal allegedly asked for Rs 3 lakh to hand it back, and when the complainant said he could not pay that much at once, the officers agreed to take it in three installments of Rs 1 lakh each. Instead of paying, the complainant went to the ACB, which set up the trap. Chavda was caught accepting the first installment, and the ACB says all three men acted in collusion.
Not an isolated incident
What makes the Bharuch case worth attention beyond its own facts is timing. It is at least the fourth Gujarat police bribery trap reported in 2026 alone: a constable at Kadi police station in Mehsana was caught taking Rs 80,000 on July 10, a sub-inspector and head constable at Bopal police station in Ahmedabad Rural were trapped over a Rs 5 lakh demand in June, and a PSI and ASI from Manjalpur police station in Vadodara were caught accepting Rs 10,000 the same month, per Social News XYZ and Gujarat Samachar’s Vadodara coverage. Amounts and ranks vary, but the underlying pattern does not: officers using routine custody of seized property or pending complaints as leverage for cash.
What it means for Gujarat residents
For anyone who has ever had a phone, vehicle, or other item seized during a police case, this case is a reminder of a specific vulnerability: retrieving seized property after a case closes or bail is granted is a bureaucratic step, not something an officer should be able to price. Gujarat’s ACB accepts complaints directly from the public, and its recent run of Bharuch-adjacent, Mehsana, Ahmedabad and Vadodara traps suggests the bureau is actively working this category of low-visibility, small-ticket corruption rather than only chasing large-scale cases. That matters because small bribes for routine police services affect far more residents day to day than the bigger scams that dominate headlines.
Outlook
All three Bharuch officers face prosecution under India’s anti-corruption law, and departmental action typically follows an ACB arrest once the case is formally registered. Whether Gujarat Police responds with tighter oversight of property-custody procedures at the station level, beyond the reactive trap-and-arrest cycle, is the more consequential question given how often this specific type of complaint keeps surfacing across districts this year.
Sources: Prokerala/PTI, Udaipur Kiran
This report was compiled and written with AI assistance from publicly reported sources, and reviewed for accuracy.