Thane Panchayat Member Arrested for Bribery

- The arrested individual is Swapnil Sitaram Patil, a 35-year-old member of the Ambadi gram panchayat in Bhiwandi taluka. - The bribe was solicited from a developer who had already constructed a three-story building with all necessary permissions and had applied for property and water tax assessments in October 2025. - Patil, along with other members, initially obstructed the tax assessment process by filing a complaint with the local tehsildar, falsely claiming the building was illegal. - In December 2025, Patil used WhatsApp to send a copy of the complaint to the builder in an act of intimidation before demanding the ₹1.7 lakh to withdraw the complaint and approve the taxes. - The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) set a trap on Wednesday, February 18, 2026, and caught Patil red-handed accepting the bribe money. - An FIR has been lodged against Patil at the Ganeshpuri police station, and Deputy Superintendent of Police, Anil Jaykar, stated that an investigation is underway to determine if other panchayat members were also involved. - This incident is not isolated in the region; in late 2025, the Thane ACB also arrested a suspended Deputy Municipal Commissioner from the Thane Municipal Corporation in a larger bribery case involving ₹25 lakh. - Corruption cases at the gram panchayat level in Thane have involved various demands, including a case where a woman sarpanch was booked for demanding ₹10,000 to register a house for property tax purposes.