10 booked for ₹300-crore temple trust land grab in Mira Road

The accused include partners of the Ramnagar Development Corporation and former and current trustees of the Shri Ram Mandir Devasthan Trust

MUMBAI: Ten people, including partners of a real estate firm and former and current trustees of a temple trust, have been booked for allegedly conspiring to take over 98,000 square metres of the trust’s land in Mira Road, valued at more than ₹300 crore.

The plot is now occupied by 60 buildings housing around 1,500 residents.

The accused include partners of the Ramnagar Development Corporation and former and current trustees of the Shri Ram Mandir Devasthan Trust. They have been booked for offences including criminal conspiracy, cheating, forgery and falsification of government documents.

Eight of the accused have been identified as Rakesh Dalchand Chaudhary, Mukesh Dalchand Chaudhary, Kailas Chandra Jain, Ramesh Chhaganlal Shah, Bharat Shantilal Shah, Prachi Devang Desai, Dalchand Girdharilal Chaudhary, and Rashesh Bharat Shah. The FIR was registered on November 3 based on the complaint of Ramesh Kothari, a resident of Bhayandar East.

According to the complaint, Kothari was looking to buy a home in Mira Road when he came across a project being developed by Ramnagar Development Corporation in the Shanti Garden area. While examining the project’s land ownership and revenue records, he allegedly found irregularities in the plot’s ownership.

According to the FIR, Dalchand Chaudhary, Rakesh Chaudhary, and Mukesh Chaudhary became active partners in Ramnagar Development Corporation just three days before the firm entered into the land deal with the trust on March 4, 1979. The trio allegedly claimed to be protected tenants and took unfair advantage of government exemptions and concessions to facilitate the transaction.

The complainant further alleged that the three partners’ names were inserted into revenue records through unauthorised handwriting and overwriting. He also pointed to discrepancies in the execution dates of documents—October 20, 1981, and November 30, 1981—submitted to the charity commissioner’s office.

After the death of Nandlal Agarwal, the trust’s chief manager and trustee, in 1991, the accused allegedly forged documents in his name and used them to obtain non-agricultural (NA) permission for the land in 2002.

The complaint also refers to an order issued in 1989 under the Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act, which allegedly required 50,000 sq m of surplus land to be handed over free of cost to the Maharashtra government and another 33,000 sq m to the Mira-Bhayandar Municipal Corporation for housing people from economically weaker sections of society.

However, instead of handing over the land, the accused allegedly developed commercial shops and multi-storeyed residential buildings on the plots earmarked for public purposes, the FIR states. The plot is now occupied by 60 buildings housing around 1,500 residents. The complainant alleged that the properties were sold for crores of rupees, but the trust did not receive any proceeds from these transactions.

Following the registration of the FIR, the investigation has been transferred to the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), said Rajendra Kamble, senior inspector of Kashimira police station.

The trustees and the builder did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment.