The Central Bureau of Investigation did not need a long surveillance trail to make its case, officials say. It needed a voice.
After catching two GST superintendents in Jhansi allegedly accepting ₹70 lakh in cash — described as the first installment of a much larger bribe — investigators pressed for something more direct than confession: proof that pointed upward. So they asked one of the arrested officers to call their superior, Deputy Commissioner Prabha Bhandari, on speakerphone, in front of them.
The call, CBI officials say, was short and devastating in its simplicity. When told “the party has delivered ₹70 lakh,” Bhandari allegedly replied, “Very good,” and then instructed that the money be converted into gold and handed over to her.
In a bureaucracy built on not leaving fingerprints, the agency is treating the recorded exchange as a rare thing: an unvarnished link between cash on the table and authority in the room — the difference between suspicion and a storyline that can stand up in court.
The Bribe, the ‘Settlement,’ and a Tax Case Worth ₹13 Crore
The alleged bribe — ₹1.5 crore, investigators say — was meant to make a problem disappear.
The case traces back to a December 19 raid carried out by a Central GST team led by Bhandari at a Jhansi firm, Jai Durga Hardware, over alleged tax irregularities. Officials indicated a demand of nearly ₹13 crore could be raised, and documents were seized. Soon after, investigators allege, a “backdoor” settlement was offered: pay ₹1.5 crore, and the case would be “settled.”
Negotiations, the CBI claims, were routed through an advocate, Naresh Kumar Gupta, with the firm’s proprietor, Raju Mangtani. Unbeknownst to those involved, investigators say, the CBI was already watching.
The agency has since arrested Mangtani and Gupta, along with the two GST superintendents, as it tries to map who offered what — and who expected to receive it.
The Search in Jhansi, the Arrest in Delhi, and the Money Trail
Once the speakerphone call landed, investigators moved quickly.
At the time the call was made, officials said Bhandari was in Delhi. A CBI team arrested her there, while another team broke open her locked flat in Jhansi late Wednesday night and conducted a search that stretched nearly four hours. The raids, officials said, yielded cash, gold, jewellery and property documents — details now likely to become central to how prosecutors frame motive and “disproportionate” intent.
Further searches led to the recovery of another ₹90 lakh, taking the total cash seized to ₹1.6 crore, along with precious metals and papers. The CBI has registered the case under the Prevention of Corruption Act and says the investigation is continuing to identify wider links and other officials’ roles.
Bhandari, officials added, is a 2016-batch Indian Revenue Service officer, and her husband is an Army colonel — a biographical footnote that, in India’s public imagination, often intensifies the shock rather than softening it.
A ‘Go-Getter’ Biography Meets a Speakerphone Reality
If the legal case is being built around a phone call, the public reaction is being built around a résumé.
Online, screenshots of Bhandari’s professional self-description circulated with the speed reserved for contradictions. The language is familiar to anyone who has read enough LinkedIn profiles: “results-driven,” “delivering excellence,” “integrity and precision,” a “go-getter attitude” and a commitment to “meaningful outcomes for stakeholders.”
It is not that people object to ambition in public service. It is that the word “precision” reads differently when investigators say the instruction was to convert cash into gold — as if the alleged offence was not only corruption, but process improvement.
The satire writes itself, and social media has obliged. But the deeper discomfort is institutional: the case adds to a growing catalogue of scandals in which enforcement authority — the power to raise demands, seize documents, and paralyse a business — appears vulnerable to being treated as leverage. In that world, the line between “compliance” and “settlement” can become less a legal boundary than a negotiation tactic.
For now, the CBI is betting that the simplest evidence — a recorded voice acknowledging money and directing its conversion — will hold up longer than any carefully polished biography ever could.
