Now Reading: CBI chargesheet details bribery in PNC Infratech highway project
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CBI chargesheet details bribery in PNC Infratech highway project
The Story in Brief
The CBI has filed a chargesheet in a special court detailing bribery allegations against PNC Infratech, the company that built the Lucknow-Kanpur expressway, and NHAI officials. The chargesheet follows a 2024 raid where NHAI general manager Purushottam Lal Chaudhary was caught accepting Rs 10 lakh in bribes from PNC employees to clear project NOCs, handovers, and final bills.
Searches across Chhatarpur, Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, and Gurugram yielded digital devices and documents related to the bribery. This adds to PNC Infratech's recent woes: the Lucknow-Kanpur expressway, opened in July, developed large cracks within a month, requiring repairs that used fans to dry patches, drawing public criticism from Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
The Indian Opinion
The PNC Infratech story has two separate scandals, a bribery chargesheet and a cracked expressway dried with fans, but the lazy narrative is to treat both as the same failure. The chargesheet is about NHAI officials taking bribes, not road quality, and it predates the cracks. Mixing them lets everyone off the hook: the company for shoddy work, the government for lax oversight, and the opposition for political theatre. The question to watch is whether the chargesheet leads to convictions or joins the pile of unprosecuted corruption cases.
Sources (3): aajtak.in, aajtak.in (2), aajtak.in (3)
This story was synthesised by AI from the 3 sources linked above. Methodology and corrections.
Updated: this story now draws on 3 sources.
