Cop on election duty booked for selling postal vote to DMK

Tirunelveli police on April 15 booked a police sub inspector for allegedly receiving a bribe of Rs 7,500 in exchange of his postal vote to the DMK.

Police personnel and government official deployed in election duty can cast their votes through post. The dates, however, differ according to the designation of the officer and the place of duty. Government officials in Tamil Nadu have already cast their postal votes for the Lok Sabha elections and by-elections in the state.

The sub-inspector was identified as Antony Sekar, who worked at the Uvari police station in Tirunelveli district. He allegedly took a bribe of ₹7,500 from Jayaraj, a DMK worker in exchange of his acknowledgement slip showing that he has voted for the party.

The scam came to the fore when flying squad officials intercepted a few DMK workers and seized postal vote papers from Jayaraj, in Tirunelveli district on Sunday (April 14).

Jayaraj confessed before poll officials that he has bribing police officials in exchange of their votes. In return, they give him the acknowledgement slip of their postal votes.

Top officials in Tirunelveli said that they have initiated an inquiry into the matter. “Once the report comes, action would be initiated against the sub-inspector,” a senior police official said.

Flying squad officials on April 13 also booked three workers of the DMK, the AIADMK and the Congress on charges of bribing voters in the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency.

In the wee hours of April 14, flying squad team intercepted V Vinobal (62) of Nemili, a Congressman and S Ramesh (40) of Punnai, a DMK cadre and recovered ₹2.40 lakh from their possession. The sleuths on inquiry found that the money was meant to be distributed among voters in the constituency.

On April 15 night, a flying squad team seized around ₹1.58 lakh from S Sambath of Ranipettai in Vellore constituency.

On Sunday night poll officials, based on intelligence inputs, raided the rooms of four MLAs including revenue minister RB Udhayakumar at the MLA hostel in Chennai. When asked, chief electoral officer Satyabrata Sahoo, said he was yet to receive the final reports about the raid at MLAs hostel.

I-T raids were underway in the houses of a DMK man in Dingidul and that at an AIADMK member in Tiruvallur in Tamil Nadu while this report was being filed.