Virar police have filed a charge sheet against the owner of Mayur Enterprises, Machhindra Vhanmane, who developed two illegal buildings in Virar. The charge sheet alleges that Vhanmane, who also worked as a commission agent for finance companies, helped flat buyers secure home loans with bogus permissions and documents. The charge sheet contains statements from around 120 witnesses and implicates a total of eight accused, six of whom are currently in jail. The investigation has also uncovered 55 other files of bogus documents related to illegal buildings in the suburb.
On Friday, Virar police filed a charge sheet after the first FIR was registered in connection with illegal construction in Virar. According to the charge sheet, the accused Machhindra Vhanmane, 37, owner of Mayur Enterprises, who developed the two illegal buildings — Rudransh A and B — also worked as a commission agent for several finance companies, secured finance for projects constructed illegally and helped unsuspecting flat buyers secure home loans.
The ground plus six-storey building has 54 flats, of which 45 1BHKs were sold for ₹26 lakh to buyers in 2022.
The matter blew up last year after citizens complained about illegal constructions in Vasai and Virar to the Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC) and the local police. The civic body conducted an investigation, and their first area of search was Chandansar, in Virar East, where they found twin buildings Rudransh A and B to be illegal. A complaint was registered in February and the developer Machhindra Vhanmane was arrested in July. Three other developers involved in the project were arrested along with Vhanmane; as the probe progressed the number of accused scaled up to eight.
Apart from the two buildings, police had stumbled upon 55 other files of bogus documents pertaining to illegal buildings constructed in the suburb, and 13 FIRs were registered by Virar police.
Vhanmane’s name figures in all 13. He sold flats allegedly by luring innocent buyers with bogus permissions, MahaRERA registrations, sanctions, and commencement and occupancy certificates.
The 3,420-page charge sheet contains statements of around 120 witnesses to prove the case against the eight accused, six of whom are arrested and lodged in the Thane jail. One accused is absconding while one has not been arrested due to his health issues.
Police have also booked officials of 13 finance companies operating between Virar and Borivali for providing loans to buyers without verifying the documents of the building.
“When the building was sealed in 2022, the finance companies should have cancelled or stopped giving further loans, but they did not. We are investigating to find out more and add them as accused in the other part of the charge sheet,” said Rajendra Kamble, senior police inspector of Virar police station.
Kamble, said that the FIR was registered following a complaint lodged by Ganesh Patil, the assistant commissioner in-charge of Ward C, (Chandansar) who investigated Rudransh A and B. Apart Vhanmane, the arrested accused were identified as landowner Dilip Benvanshi, 31, Dilip Adkhale, 40, of Pheonix Corporation, Prashant Patil, 33, a partner in Rudransh Realtors and stamp-maker Rajesh Naik, 54.
The charge sheet showed two more names in the list of accused — Devendra Manji, 52, a stamp maker, and Pramod Jore, 40, a contractor, who had built the A wing of Rudransh. “We found ₹1 crore in Jore’s bank account which he was laundering for the accused,” said a police officer from Virar police station. “Since Manji is suffering from gangrene in one of his legs, we are unable to arrest him.”
The police claimed to have seized 93 rubber stamps of various authorities like the collector and deputy collector of Thane, the deputy director of VVCMC, the village development officer, the sarpanch, the secondary registrars at Vasai and Bhiwandi, MMRDA officers and various architects, lawyers and doctors. They also seized around 600 letterheads of VVCMC, which were used to fabricate commencement certificates, and over 500 letterheads of CIDCO from the office of Adkhale, one of the accused.
In his complaint, Patil said that the accused had used fabricated documents like non-agriculture permission, construction permission, occupancy certificate and search reports by using the forged signatures of the district collectors of Thane, Palghar and the town planner of VVCMC, and got the project registered with MahaRERA.
Source: Hindustan Times
