Three more FIRs on illegal buildings registered in Virar

The Virar police in Mumbai have registered three fresh FIRs against illegal buildings involved in a major racket using fabricated documents. The buildings were found to be illegal based on documents and complaints filed by local civic officials. This comes after the police recently busted a scam involving the use of fabricated documents to register construction projects with the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority.

MUMBAI: Two days after busting a major racket that involved the use of allegedly fabricated documents to register construction projects with the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA), the Virar police on Thursday registered three fresh FIRs pertaining to three illegal buildings. The FIRs were registered based on complaints lodged by local civic officials.

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Ramesh Manale, additional municipal commissioner of the Vasai Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC) said that after perusing the documents of the buildings, they were all found to be illegal. “Based on the documents, we have filed police complaints and accordingly the police have registered FIRs,” said Manale, adding that over the past two years, the civic body had registered complaints in over 600 cases of buildings constructed without the requisite permissions.

The Virar police, however, said that they had given VVCMC a list of 40 illegal buildings two months ago but nothing was done about it till this week. “We gave VVCMC the list two months ago. These were complaints we had received from individuals, and after investigation found that they did not have occupancy certificates (OCs) or commencement certificates (CCs),” said Rajendra Kamble, senior police inspector of Virar police station.

The three FIRs filed on Thursday pertain to Omkar Apartment, Vinayak Apartment at Phoolpada in Virar East and Anandi Villa, also in Virar East. “Anandi Villa A and B wings have 45 flats each and a restaurant on the ground floor,” said a police officer from Virar police station. “This building was issued a notice under the MRTP Act by VVCMC in 2018; however, no further action was taken till Thursday.”

The huge scam broke a few days ago, following which the Virar police on Tuesday arrested five persons and recovered a huge stock of rubber stamps and letterheads of Thane and Palghar revenue officials, MMRDA, CIDCO and VVCMC. The seizure of 55 files from the office of one of the arrested accused revealed that the gang had provided fabricated documents for at least 55 buildings, in which tenements were sold by portraying them as legal and authorised.

The arrested accused are identified as landowner Dilip Benvanshi (31), Machhindra Vhanmane (37), owner of Mayur Enterprises, Dilip Adkhale (40) of Pheonix Corporation, Prashant Patil (33), a partner in Rudransh Realtors, and stamp-maker Rajesh Naik, 54.

According to Kamble, the FIR was registered following a complaint lodged by Ganesh Patil, in-charge assistant commissioner of Ward C, Chandansar, about two buildings, Rudransh A and Rudransh B, constructed in the area. In his police complaint, Patil said that the accused had used fabricated documents like non-agriculture permissions, construction permissions, occupancy certificates and search reports by using forged signatures of the district collectors of Thane and Palghar and the town planner of VVCMC to get the project registered with MahaRERA.

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.