The Azad Maidan police arrested 10 people — all third party auditors — for cheating and producing false documents in a road repair scam involving the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
The Azad Maidan police arrested 10 people — all third party auditors — for cheating and producing false documents in a road repair scam involving the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). The arrests were made late on Wednesday after the police investigated an FIR lodged by the civic body regarding the scam.
The arrested accused have been identified as Santosh Kadam (42), Ashfaque Mansoorali Sayyed (26), Milind Kumawat (26), Rakesh Merwade (34), Pawankumar Shukla (26), Premanand Dhanawade (37), Mangesh Talekar (33), Dheeraj Phuljhele (40), Rahul Shinde (29) and Dhairyasheel Patil (33).
All the arrested accused are from two auditing companies — SGS Consultancy and IRS (Indian Register of Shipping). They were produced at the Esplanade court on Thursday and remanded to police custody.
According to the investigators, the BMC had on April 27, registered an FIR against six contractors and two audit companies alleging criminal conspiracy and cheating. “The FIR was registered after the BMC-appointed inquiry team inspected 24 roads in the city, including 11 in the suburbs,” said a senior officer from Azad Maidan police station.
“The BMC team allegedly found numerous irregularities in the work done by the contractors. It found that most of the roads had not been properly repaired and reconstruction was not up to the mark. In fact, the FIR stated that all the roads were not up to the standard prescribed by the BMC,” said an officer.
“We arrested the employees of the audit agencies on charges of submitting false assessment reports of the roads that we were supposed to inspect. The auditors in their reports mentioned that all the roads were built up to the mark, but the internal BMC inquiry found otherwise. It is a serious offence and further investigations are still underway,” said Ashok Dudhe, DCP (Operations) and Mumbai police spokesperson.
After the arrest of 10 third party auditors, the axe is likely to fall on the six contractors and senior civic officials, who were found to be involved in the road repairs scam. The contractors include RPS Infraprojects, Mahavir Infraprojects, RK Madhani, J Kumar, Relcon Infraprojects and KR Constructions.
According to the civic officials, the contractors are also likely to be arrested for their role in the scam. The BMC has also suspended the then chief engineer (roads) Ashok Pawar and chief engineer (vigilance) Uday Murudkar, as they were found guilty in the civic inquiry. However, no police complaint was registered against them.
