A special vigilance court in Patna on Friday remanded additional collector Maharshi Ram, held on bribery charges from Nawada on Thursday, in judicial custody for two weeks.

Ram had allegedly demanded Rs 5 lakh as bribe from a man called Hiralal, a cloth merchant of Hisua in Nawada district, for passing an order in a land mutation case. However, the deal was finalised at Rs 4.5 lakh, a senior bureau official said.

Acting on the complaint, a bureau team, headed by deputy superintendent of police Jamiruddin, laid a trap and caught Ram as soon as he received bribe of Rs 4 lakh from the complainant at his official residence in Nawada town, around 100km southeast of Patna.

The members of the raiding team were taken aback when they found three bottles of liquor at the official residence of the additional collector, adjacent to the residence of the district magistrate. "A separate case under Excise Act has been lodged against him," Jamiruddin said.

In another trap case, the bureau officials arrested a sub-inspector of police, Deepak Kumar, from Bihta in Patna rural on Friday, while he was accepting Rs 15,000 as bribe from one Jitendra Singh in lieu of releasing his vehicle from the police station.

A day earlier, the bureau sleuths had searched the office and residential premises of Nawada district cooperative officer Vikram Kumar Jha and unearthed unaccounted property worth over Rs 3 crore. In addition, 11 passbooks of different banks were seized.

In July this year, the vigilance sleuths nabbed an IAS officer, Jitendra Gupta, while taking a bribe of Rs 80,000 on his first posting as sub-divisional officer of Mohania in Kaimur district. He was subsequently sent to jail.

The anti-corruption wing of the government has launched a crackdown on corrupt public servants and netted 79 public servants in trap cases since January this year. Over 600 public servants have been arrested on bribe charge since 2006.