Four booked under MCOCA for bid to sell Cidco plot

Source: hindustantimes.com

In the past three weeks, the economic offences wing (EOW) of Navi Mumbai police arrested three people for allegedly illegally selling a plot owned by City and Industrial Development Corporation (Cidco) with bogus documents.

Apart from booking the accused for cheating under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the police also slapped the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) in the case.

“This is the first case in the EOW section in Navi Mumbai where we have slapped MCOCA,” said Ajay Kadam, assistant commissioner of police (crime)

According to the police, Jhoma Koli, 60, Prabhakar Mhatre, 53, Lavesh Jadhav, 39, Narendra Patel, 30, had occupied a plot at Belapur, Sector 20, in 2014. They later made bogus allotment letters, lease agreement in the letterhead of Cidco and sold it to a company – Yash Buildcon Private Limited.

“Dinesh Patel, a shareholder from Yash Buildcon had paid ₹1.87 crore to the accused for the plot. After that, the company also cleared the basic enquiries conducted by Cidco and procured required documents to develop a two-storey building there. They also received completion certificate (CC) from the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) after a year based on the bogus documents,” Kadam said.

“The concerned department of Cidco later found something amiss in the file and they issued a stay order to Yash Buildcon in 2017. Officials from the company then approached us and registered an FIR against the accused,” he said.

After examining all the papers and investigating the case, the police arrested Mhatre and Jadhav in the third week of August. They arrested Patel on Thursday. The main accused Jhoma Koli died of some disease over a year ago.

“The accused have quite a few similar cases against them in Navi Mumbai. In a few cases they were arrested too. After analyzing the case we had decided book the accused under MCOCA and sections 420, 406, 465, 466, 467, 471 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The accused are in police custody now,” another police officer said.