Mumbai road scam: Cops want to nail BMC's dirty dozen

The ghost of the Rs 352-crore road scam will continue to haunt senior BMC officials even in the near future as the special investigation team (SIT) probing the case has sought the civic body's permission to reportedly make as many as 16 more arrests and prosecute the three already arrested.

BMC chief Ajoy Mehta

As per the norms, if any government official is undergoing prosecution, permission to arrest them has to be sought. To that end, the SIT has written to civic commissioner Ajoy Mehta for his formal approval, who confirmed the development and said, "My office has got the letter from the police, but I will have to check the contents since it has been forwarded to the law department for their legal opinion."

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New development
According to a police official, "During the investigation, we found the involvement of more officers in the scam. The road engineers (in charge of particular roads) have helped contractors in the malpractices. To get in-depth details on what every officers' role is, we need to arrest more people soon."

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However, the police and BMC is tight-lipped on the exact number of engineers mentioned in the list of probable candidates for arrest. Sources, though, are claiming that 16 more engineers might face arrest soon. Recently, mid-day had reported that the police is taking IIT-B's help from IIT-Bombay to make a watertight case against the contractor. Up till now, 26 people have been arrested in connection with road scam, including two chief engineers and an executive engineer from the road department.

Civic inquiry revealed
The first phase of the civic body's inquiry report had concluded that work on all 34 roads - built between 2013 and 2015 - that were inspected was sub-standard and led to a loss of Rs 14 crore. Following the report's findings, the civic chief had suspended then chief engineer (Vigilance), UM Murudkar, and chief engineer (Building Maintenance), Ashok Pawar, for failing to perform their duties. Later, the SIT arrested one more official - executive engineer, Kishor Yerme - on the charges of helping contactors by collecting fines for their shoddy job.

In the FIR it filed at the Azad Maidan police station, the civic body named six contractors - RPS Infra, KR Construction, J Kumar, Relcon Infraprojects, RK Madhani and Mahavir Infrastructure - along with two third-party auditors SGC Consultant and IRS. On condition of anonymity a senior civic official said, "Last week, the SIT also sought permission from the BMC to prosecute the three arrested officials.

Despite repeated attempts, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), Zone 1, Manoj Sharma was not available for comment.