Coonoor Municipality Commissioner caught accepting bribe, arrested

The Coonoor Municipality Commissioner, M. Ilamparithi, was arrested by the Directorate Vigilance and Anti-Corruption (DVAC) police for accepting a bribe of ₹2 lakh at his residence on Tuesday evening.

According to the police, the complainant in the case, C. Ramesh, a resident of Kotagiri, had applied for plan approval for a 2,500 square foot building in Kotagiri.

The police said that after the Assistant Director of the Directorate of Town and Country Planning granted technical clearance, the Coonoor Municipality Commissioner, who is also in-charge of Kotagiri, had failed to raise the demand for payment of fees for the building licence to be issued. As the demand had not been raised for over two months, Mr. Ramesh approached the Commissioner, who is said to have demanded ₹6 lakh to process his application on January 9, 2026. After initially refusing, the complainant once again is said to have approached Ilamparithi who in turn brought down his demand to ₹5 lakh.

On Tuesday, Ilamparithi is said to have asked the complainant to pay him a first-instalment of ₹2 lakh and invited him to a restaurant in Coonoor and then to his residence, where he made a junior assistant, identified as Vignesh, collect the money.

The DVAC, who had been informed by the complainant of the demand, laid a trap and caught both men. They conducted tests to identify whether fingerprints on the currency notes matched with those of Ilamparithi and Vignesh, following which both men were arrested on Tuesday evening.

Ilamparithi has become the second municipal commissioner to be arrested since 2024, with the then Udhagamandalam Municipality Commissioner Jahangir Basha arrested with ₹11.7 lakh in unaccounted cash in a vehicle in which he was travelling.