A 1988-batch IAS officer, Subodh Agarwal retired on December 31, 2025 — days after the state government sanctioned his prosecution in the case. (Source: Express Photo)
Rajasthan’s Anti-Corruption Bureau Thursday arrested absconding former IAS officer Subodh Agarwal from New Delhi in connection with the alleged Jal Jeevan Mission scam.
Earlier, a Jaipur court had issued an arrest warrant against the officer who had been evading arrest since long.
ACB officials said two private firms had submitted fake completion certificates along with a letter of award issued by Indian Railway Construction International Limited (IRCON) along with their bid documents for allegedly getting contracts under Jal Jeevan Mission in connivance with the senior officials of the Public Health Engineering Department, Rajasthan.
When the Additional Chief Engineer of PHED sought to verify these certificates, IRCON Bengaluru office had allegedly declared them forged. It was alleged that corruption worth crores of rupees was done by getting tenders of about Rs 960 crore through these fake completion certificates.
ACB Director General Govind Gupta said that another allegation is that Subodh Agarwal, the additional chief secretary of the PHED, and other PHED officials included the requirement of a site visit certificate in the tenders of major projects (above Rs 50 crore), which was against the rules.
Gupta said this revealed the identity of the bidders, which should have been kept confidential. He said that the site visit requirement corrupted the process leading to unexpectedly high tender premiums by 30-40 percent. These tenders, amounting to about Rs 20,000 crore, were allegedly approved by the PHED officials.
Gupta said that ACB teams made serious attempts to arrest the accused, with the teams getting in touch with most known relatives and contacts of all the accused — including their social media contacts. As for Agarwal, Gupta said that the ACB came close twice but Agarwal managed to leave by then.
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ACB officials said that he was arrested from a public place Thursday. Earlier, ACB officials had said that 40 teams had looked for Agarwal at over 100 locations in 21 cities and questioned over 50 people — including Agarwal’s close relatives, friends, domestic worker, and driver, among others.
The 10 accused previously arrested in the case are government engineers and officers, including Dinesh Goyal, K D Gupta, Subhanshu Dixit, Sushil Sharma, Niril Kumar, Vishal Saxena, Arun Srivastava, D K Gaud, Mahendra Prakash Soni, and Mukesh Pathak, a private person. They are currently in judicial custody.
