The CBI is learnt to have found nothing against Virendra D Mhaiskar, Chairman and Managing Director (CMD) of IRB Infrastructure Developers ltd, and 16 others in two cases related to land-grabbing and killing of Right to Information (RTI) activist Satish Shetty. The land scam was exposed by the same RTI activist in 2009. In January 2010, Shetty was found murdered.
The land-grabbing case took place at Pimpaloli village in Maharashtra along the Pune-Mumbai expressway for a proposed integrated township project. The IRB infra chief and others were charged for allegedly buying a government land in this project. Exposure of this allegedly illegal land purchase deal was one of the reasons why the RTI activist Shetty was murdered in 2010, as mentioned by CBI in its report in 2014.
However, sources in CBI said that the agency did not find anything against Mhaiskar in both the murder as well as land scam cases. The agency is all set to file a closure report in the case soon. “The CBI had given clean chit to Mhaiskar and others in the land grabbing case on March 28, while on last Friday, it had given the same clean chit on the RTI activist’s murder as well,” sources added.
Mhaiskar and 11 others were granted bail by the court. He was allowed to travel abroad with certain conditions by court.
IRB Infrastructure Developers ltd is the holding company of IRB Group. Its subsidiary Ideal Road Builders Pvt ltd was given the contract to maintain the expressway from August 2004-19. Aryan Infrastructure Investments Pvt ltd is another IRB subsidiary and real estate development arm involved in the purchase of land between 2007 and 2010. The sale deeds for some of the land were later scrapped through a cancellation deed.