JAIPUR: In probably the biggest crackdown on corruption in the mines department, a special team of Rajasthan's anti-corruption bureau (ACB) on Wednesday arrested six people, including top government officials, in a bribery case involving nearly Rs 4 crore in cash.

Besides, Ashok Singhvi, principal secretary, mines department, has been taken into custody for his alleged involvement in the case. Officials told TOI that they have enough evidence against Singhvi, a 1983 batch IAS officer , and are searching his Jaipur residence for more clues, asserting that his arrest is imminent.

Unlike in the previous instances, where the ACB goes after an accused after a complaint is made against them, this time they built up on their own information, and caught red-handed both the receivers and the givers of the bribe.

Elaborating on the operation, Navdeep Singh, director general (ACB), told the media, "After working on the information by IGP M N Dinesh, the ACB constituted two teams to raid two different places, in Udaipur and Bhilwara, simultaneously."

In Udaipur, the ACB arrested one Sanjay Sethi while he was in the act of taking the bribe, amounting Rs 2.55 crore in cash. Sethi is allegedly the one who brokered the deal between the mines department and one Sher Khan , mine owner in Chittorgarh, whose six mines had been shut down.

Also arrested here was Shyam Singhvi, a chartered accountant , and the one who was giving the bribe to Sethi on behalf of Khan. During the operation, Pankaj Gehlot, additional director, mines, was also arrested, Singh said. He is said to be supervising the entire deal.

The ACB then conducted searches at Sethi's residence and seized Rs 1.25 crore in cash.The second team of the ACB raided a place in Bhilwara and arrested one Pushkar Raj Ameta , an engineer in the mines department, who was in the act of taking Rs 2.36 lakh in cash. from one Rasheed Khan, who had come here on the behalf of mines owner Sher Khan.

On further investigations, the team found that Ameta had 14 bank accounts with an aggregate cash of Rs 43 lakh.

Later in the evening, the team raided Ashok Singhvi, a senior IAS officer who is the principal secretary of the mines department . "We have taken him into custody. He would be interrogated as we have evidence that Sanjay Sethi worked for him," said a senior officer of ACB on the condition of anonymity.

Intense searches were on at the house of Singhvi at the time of going to print. "We are searching his house and he is been interrogated," a senior police official said.