Patna, May 30: Conducting raids on the houses of three public servants and a retired official, the economic offences unit and the vigilance department today seized assets worth over Rs 20 crore.

The office and residential premises of three serving officials, including two executive engineers of the building construction department, were searched in Patna, Jehanabad, Muzaffarpur and Darbhanga districts. The houses of a former enforcement officer in the transport department, who recently took voluntary retirement, were also raided.

Additional director-general of police (law and order) S.K. Bhardwaj said the search of the office and the residential premises of the building construction department executive engineer Ramchandra Sharma in Patna and Jehanabad led to the seizure of disproportionate assets worth Rs 4.52 crore. The search teams also recovered documents pertaining to bank lockers and investments in insurance companies, the value of which is yet to be estimated.

In another operation, the search teams of the economic offences unit (EOU) stumbled upon documents related to movable and immovable property worth Rs. 3.4 crore belonging to Awadhesh Kumar Mandal, another executive engineer of the building construction department. Mandal is at present posted in Muzaffarpur district.

The third operation carried out by the EOU yielded in the seizure of unaccounted wealth worth Rs 7.44 crore from the house of Ramesh Pathak, a retired enforcement officer of the transport department. “Perhaps Pathak had amassed so much wealth that he didn’t find it necessary to continue with the service,” Bharadwaj said.

Director-general (vigilance) Pramod Kumar Thakur said the vigilance investigation bureau conducted simultaneous raids on the office and residential premises of Girish Kumar, a motor vehicle inspector of the transport department, in Patna and Darbhanaga. He is at present posted in Darbhanga.