Builder arrested in ULC scam

With the arrest of a builder from Mira-Bhayander township here, Thane city police today claimed to have unearthed a scam in the ULC department of the District Collectorate.

Also, police booked one more person and an architect besides the then government officials from the ULC section (of the Collectorate and Civic Corporation) involved in the fraud.

They have been booked under sections 420, 467, 468, 470, 471 and 120B of the IPC and also sections 13 (1) (d) of the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988, police said.

The accused builder--Shaymsunder Agarwal--who was supposed to surrender his excess land holding to the government under the ULC Act or get an exemption from the government under Section 20 of the Act, had cheated people and authorities into believing that he has got the exemption and carried out construction on a plot in Mira Bhayander locality.
 

For proceeding with the construction, he went ahead cooking up the permissions, orders etc for which he made use of stamps and signatures in connivance with government officers.

According to a senior police officer from the Thane Commissionerate the fraud caused losses to tune of Rs 11.17 crore to the government exchequer.

"This is only a tip of an iceberg and further probe will reveal many more such violations under section 20 of the ULC Act in various civic corporation limits in the district," he said.

An FIR has been registered with the Thane Nagar police station in connection with the case.

The offence states that all the alleged accused had connived and when it was necessary to give 5% of land to the government for sake of economically weaker while carrying out the construction on the ULC land they conveniently cooked up records and evaded it.

The land under construction was totaling around 23340 sq.Mts of which a specific area was to be given to the government which the alleged accused conveniently avoided. They also managed the NA and building permissions for the same from relevant departments.

The matter came to light when social activist sourced out information under the RTI Act to find that several such properties were not only sold in the open market without permits from the competent authority, but mutation entries of original owners were deleted and transferred to new buyers in the 7/12 revenue records.