Ratnagiri ZP Officials Arrested After Bribe Taken to Manipulate Audit Report

Three Ratnagiri Zilla Parishad officials have been arrested for accepting ₹16,500 bribe to manipulate an audit report. The ACB caught them red-handed and legal proceedings are underway.

Ratnagiri|November 01,2025: Three officials from the Ratnagiri Zilla Parishad were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) for allegedly accepting a bribe of ₹16,500 to exclude issues raised in an audit report.

The accused include Sharad Raghunath Jadhav (Assistant Director, Local Fund Audit Office), Siddharth Vijay Shetye (Assistant Audit Officer, ZP Finance Department), and Satej Shantaram Ghawali (contractual peon).

According to the complaint, the audit covered the financial years 2020-21 and 2021-22 and identified 21 pending issues. To omit those issues from the final report, the accused allegedly demanded ₹24,000 from the complainant but accepted ₹16,500 during a sting operation.

The complaint was first filed against them to the ACB, which staged a trap at the audit office and caught them in the act.

Officials have booked them under the provisions of the Prevention of Corruption Act. A court later ordered police custody for the accused

Following this incident, there’s mounting criticism over accountability within Ratnagiri district’s administrative machinery. Local civic and employee unions are calling for stricter oversight of ZP audit and finance functions.

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