Central government official, wife among 4 booked for duping investors on the pretext of doubling returns

The accused have been identified as Ashutosh Kumar Sahay, his wife Monica Sahay, Manoj Patel and Sanjay Pandey. According to the police, Sahay – the prime accused – is an employee of the handloom export department of the textile ministry and Patel as well as Pandey were his accomplices

Mumbai: Four persons, including a government officer and his wife, were booked recently for allegedly cheating several people on the pretext of doubling their investment within a year in slum rehabilitation schemes and redevelopment projects around the city.

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The accused have been identified as Ashutosh Kumar Sahay, his wife Monica Sahay, Manoj Patel and Sanjay Pandey. According to the police, Sahay – the prime accused – is an employee of the handloom export department of the textile ministry and Patel as well as Pandey were his accomplices.

“In 2016, the anti-corruption bureau caught Sahay while he was trying to bribe a policeman who was investigating a cheating case against him. In 2018, the economic offences wing of the Mumbai police arrested Sahay for duping a builder of ₹4 crore,” an officer from Versova police station said.

According to the police, one of the victims, Ramkumar Dadhich, a businessman from Kota in Rajasthan, approached them on Thursday and claimed to have lost ₹5.77 crore to this investment scam. “Sahay had told the complainant and some of his friends that he could use his connections with other government officials to help them double their investments within a year if they put those in redevelopment projects in Mumbai. The accused also provided them with forged documents of ownership of a land parcel in Bhandup and its fake valuation certificate,” the officer said.

Dadhich told the police that he first met Sahay in 2017. “We were told he was a senior IAS officer while his wife was a senior official in infrastructure firm IL&FS Global. The couple told us they were involved in several property redevelopment projects in Mumbai wherein they got investments from people to complete those quickly and then return them double the amount within a year. They also said they had financed many films,” the complainant told the police.

Dadhich said he and many other investors had been called to the Versova office of the infrastructure company purportedly owned by the couple. “We saw Sahay’s pictures with many eminent people in the government as well as those from the entertainment business there. On seeing the documents related to the project in Bhandup they claimed they were focusing on at that time, I decided to invest ₹5 crore in the project,” he said in his statement to the police. He added that he invested an additional ₹77 lakh later, taking his total investment to ₹5.77 crore.

The four accused have been booked for criminal breach of trust, fraud, forgery and criminal intimidation under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code as well relevant sections of the Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (In Financial Establishments) Act, 1999.