New Delhi: In a concerted crackdown, the CBI on May 22 arrested a Personal Assistant of Minister of State for Finance Gingee N Ramachandran for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs four lakh for fixing an official posting and nabbed a Chennai-based chartered accountant who acted as a conduit even as government put on hold transfer of 54 senior income tax officials.

Acting on a specific information that Anurag Vardhan, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) of 1994 batch, had approached A Krishnamurthy, the Chennai-based Chartered Accountant and alleged middleman, for his transfer to Mumbai, an agency spokesman said.

The deal was fixed for Rs five lakh and subsequently the IRS officer was asked to pay Rs four lakh to a "tout" on May 22. The residence of Vardhan in New Delhi was kept under a watch and was raided when the alleged "tout" came to collect the money, the spokesman said.

Both of them were arrested and the CBI later found that the tout was none other than the first Personal Assistant of the Union Minister identified as R Perumalswamy alias Babu.

The money was paid after the transfer orders were issued by the Finance Ministry last night, the spokesman said.

PTI