JAIPUR: In the biggest-ever seizure of unaccounted money in the state after demonetization, sleuths of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) seized 2,000 units of the new Rs 2,000 currency on Thursday from the house of Dinesh Verma, the chief fire officer The ACB had initially arrested the officer along with a middleman on Thursday evening for accepting a bri be of Rs 1.50 lakh.The sleuths then decided to conduct a search and raided the house of the accused officer at Shipra Path and seized Rs 61 lakh. Out of this, Rs 40 lakh were in the denomination of Rs 2,000.During the raid, family members of the officer were seen dumping currency notes in nearby houses. These too were seized by the ACB team. The sleuths claimed that they have unearthed a corruption racket in the fire department for issuing fire NOCs to various buildings.“We received information that a middleman, Pushpendra Agarwal, had issued a fire NOC to a person on the behest of Verma. For the deal, the officer charged Rs 1.5 lakh as bribe. After interrogation the officer, we seized the bribe money ,“ said Sachin Mittal, inspector general of police, ACB.“Till 10pm, we managed to seize Rs 61lakh. Out of this, Rs 40 lakh were in the denomination of Rs 2,000. We are still counting and hope to unearth more money ,“ Mittal added.For a long time, ACB had found evidence that Verma was charging huge sums for issuing fire NOCs to various private buildings in the city through the middleman, identified as Pusphendra Agarwal.The ACB had kept some of his telephones under surveillance for a long time. “What needs to be investigated in this case is as to how Verma had managed to accumulate Rs 61 lakh in notes that are in circulation. We have seized 2,000 currency notes of Rs 2000, which comes to Rs 40 lakh. The rest is in the denominations of Rs 100 and Rs 50,“ Mittal added.The plan to trap Verma was kept a secret as ACB wanted to raid the officer's house. A team, led by Yogesh Dadich, additional SP , ACB, raided his house at 7450, Shipra Path.Spotting ACB officials, the family took the currency notes in a sack and hid it on the terrace. “Family members also threw some of the currency notes into the compounds of nearby houses.These too have been seized by our team,“ said Mittal.“This is the biggest corruption racket that we have unearthed involving new currency notes. There is also a chain of officers in the fire department who have benefitted from Verma. We are expecting more arrests,“ Singh said.Earlier too, Verma, who was with the fire office in Kota, had faced charges.