New Delhi: Tightening its grip on checking corruption in Government departments, the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) today (Sep 29, 2004) carried out countrywide searches during which it arrested one passport clerk and registered a case against a former project director of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) against whom Satyendra Dubey had levelled allegations of bunglings.

The raids, the third countrywide search this year, began in the wee hours of the day against several Government, bank and public sector undertaking officials for alleged bunglings and corrupt practices, CBI sources said.

More than two-dozen cases had been registered against people so far during the searches, which were being carried out at over 50 places across country, they said.

The CBI registered a case against a project director of NHAI and a retired Army Brigadier, who was running a consultancy service for the Highway authority.

Both were named by NHAI engineer Satyendra Dubey in his letter to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Dubey, who was killed in a roadside robbery, had levelled allegation of large scale bunglings in the construction of highway in Bihar.

CBI sleuths also arrested a passport clerk in Hyderabad for allegedly accepting bunches of passport forms along with bribe.

Searches were taking place at the Additional Commissioner of Municipal Corporation of Delhi R M Singh and the Medical Superintendent of the Rao Tula Ram Hospital.

A similar raid was carried out by CBI on June 25 during which the agency recovered unaccounted wealth to the tune of crores of Rupees.