Mumbai Crime: Three public servants start scam within City Group racket

The multi-crore City Limousines and City Realcom scam took a new twist after three government servants -- a clerk and two peons of High Court-appointed government liquidator office -- were booked for trying to piggyback on the scam to start yet another racket. The accused allegedly made up bogus victims of the City Group scam and tried to clear compensation claims in their name. Twenty-six others were also booked in the case.

Flashback
In 2007 and 2009, the Economic Offences Wing registered two cases against M/s City Limousines (India) Ltd and M/s City Realcom India Ltd. The two City Group companies had allegedly duped over 70,000 people across the country by promising unrealistic returns on their investments. During the probe, the EOW arrested seven persons, including the firm's chairman, Sayyed Masood, and seized properties worth nearly R200 crore.

In December 2010, the Bombay High Court ordered the appointment of a liquidator to attend to victims' claims. In 2012, the liquidator sent notices to 20,000 investors, asking them to produce documents to process their claims.

On Thursday, the Azad Mai­dan police registered an FIR against Keshav Satpute, additional divisional clerk Keshav Satpute, as well as Gopal Bagul and Santosh Chavan, both peons. Twenty-six more were booked, including one Ramdas Yadav from Sangli district.

Piggyback con
According to the police, in July 2016, Yadav filed an email complaint with the liquidator against two peons and a clerk, alleging that they had been extorting him and 25 other investors for a year. He said that under the law they were supposed to file a claim from 2015, but the two peons told them they would get more money by filing claims from 2013.

Yadav had alleged that the high court peons and the clerk extorted a total of R5.54 lakh from the 26 investors for the sanction letter required to pull off this con, but all of them did not get the sanction letters.

When the liquidator's office conducted an inquiry, however, they found that Yadav and other the 25 had never invested money in the scheme but were making false claims. They also found that the clerk and peons were in on the con. Based on the complaint of government liquidator Pankaj Shrivastav, whose office is at Antop Hill, the accused were booked under the IPC for cheating, forgery and criminal conspiracy, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone 1) Manoj Kumar Sharma.