ACB court sends seven arrested in SRA scheme in police custody

Mumbai, Sep 15 (UNI) Special Anti-Corruption court today remanded seven people, arrested in connection with the alleged fraud and criminal conspiracy committed in a Slum Rehabilitation Authority(SRA) scheme, in police custody till September 20.

All the seven arrested yesterday by the ACB sleuths were produced before special ACB Judge P N Deshmukh this afternoon and sought one-week police custody for further interrogation.

Defence counsel, however, argued that since the interrogations of arrested persons were going on for the past one year and all documents were also seized by the authorities in a raid conducted by them from various places hence a seperate custodial interrogation is not required.

However, special public prosecutor R V Kini sought seven-day police custody in order to unearth more information about this case.

He also informed the court that six more persons are wanted in this case and the police had already issued 72-hour notices to them to surrender by Monday.

Those arrested today are Subhash Velji Chawda (architect) Netaji Gopichand Shinde (Chief Promoter) Subhash Parulekar (Rtld Rent Collector), Sudin Baba Achrekar (Colony Officer),Jayant Joshi (Rtld Senior Colony Officer), Sanjay Joshi (Asst.Accounts Officer-SRA) and Suresh Gunjal (Clerk-SRA).

ACB took initiative to investigate irregularities in the distribution of flats under SRA schme following a private complaint filed by Arun Ramavatar Pathak last year against the main accused persons Prakash Ghadiyar, Kiran Mahadik and Ramesh Bhandari, all developers of Siddhi Vinayak Construction Company.

Pathak in his complaint stated that in the year 2001, a proposed housing society was formed by the residents of the Sukurwadi in the name of Siddhi Vinayak Cooperative Housing Society under SRA scheme and the accused appointed to develop the slum of Sukurwadi.

He pointed out that the developers made many irregularities and made over 100 non-eligible slum dwellers who were illegally made eligible for the said scheme.

All the arrested were booked under section 13(1)(d) of The Prevention of Corruption Act 1988, sections 465, 468, 471, 420 read with 120(b) and 109(b) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).

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