Chandigarh, Sept. 26 -- The Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) on Friday arrested a private passport agent after she was caught red-handed while accepting a Rs.20,000 bribe to facilitate early issuance of a passport through her purported contacts with officials at the passport office in Jalandhar.

According to a VB spokesperson, the accused, Hardeep Kaur, a private passport agent based in Jalandhar, was arrested following a complaint lodged by a resident of Kandola Kurd village in Phillaur tehsil.

The complainant had applied for a passport and said her police verification had been cleared. However, when she visited the passport office in Jalandhar with her original documents, she alleged that a dealing hand told her that the police verificati...