Cops find house of cash in Howrah

When anti-corruption police in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal raided a house belonging to a municipal engineer in the city of Howrah on Friday evening, little did they realise they would stumble upon the largest amount of of cash they had ever seen.

Police raided Pronab Adhikary's house after receiving complaints from real estate developers that he had been demanding bribes for clearing building plans. His wife has denied the allegations, and said her husband was being framed.

Adhikary's mid-level job as an engineer in the local government-run municipality involved clearing building construction plans.

By the end of the raid, they had recovered cash worth $31m (£20m) from the 15-year-old, six-room, two-storey house in the suburb of Howrah, on the outskirts of the capital, Calcutta.

Corruption is rife in real estate in India, where developers and officials often connive in clearing illegal building plans in return for bribes. Also, cash - also called 'black' or illicit money - is often hoarded at home to avoid paying income tax.

In November 2014, cash worth more than $15m was found in the house of an engineer in Noida in the suburbs of Delhi.

An income tax raid on a bureaucrat couple's house in the central state of Madhya Pradesh in 2010 yielded cash worth $459,770. They were both dismissed from service for "amassing property through corrupt means".

In 1996, bundles of currency notes worth $551,724 - money collected in bribes - were seized bags and suitcases from former federal telecommunications minister Sukh Ram's house. He was convicted and sent to prison.