LUCKNOW, Jan. 28 -- Two senior officers at the Jhansi Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) office were informed of the Rs 70 lakh bribery scandal before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) stepped in late last month, sources said. According to them, the trader who was allegedly being extorted had approached the two officers with a complaint prior to contacting the CBI. Though they reportedly assured him that action would be taken, investigators said no enforcement step, search, or report to department headquarters followed. The agency was now collecting call records, departmental files and witness statements to assess whether the inaction was deliberate. The two officers are expected to be questioned soon. The case stems from a CBI operation on December 31, 2025, that led to the arrest of deputy commissioner Prabha Bhandari, an Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer posted in Jhansi, along with superintendents Anil Tiwari and Ajay Kumar Sharma, advocate Naresh Kumar Gupta (alleged intermediary), and trader Raju Mangtani of Jai Durga Hardware. The agency registered the case a day earlier after receiving inputs that CGST officials had been demanding Rs.1.5 crore from a trader in exchange for favourable handling of GST matters. Acting on this, the CBI laid a trap on December 30 and caught the two superintendents allegedly accepting Rs.70 lakh - the first instalment of the bribe. During interrogation, the arrested officers allegedly implicated Bhandari as the key conspirator. Investigators claimed that when one superintendent informed her over a monitored phone call that the money had been received, she responded positively and instructed that the cash be converted into gold and delivered to her. Searches at multiple premises linked to the accused led to the seizure of about Rs.1.60 crore in cash, gold, silver, jewellery and property-related documents, officials said....