Eight months after a leading, Thane builder shot himself after having allegedly suffered harassment at the hands of a coterie of some “corrupt” local corporators, one more builder attempted suicide at Navi Mumbai, creating sensation in Mumbai’s satellite city.
Raj Khanderi of the Swaraj Developers tried to commit suicide by shooting himself with his revolver in the head at his Sanpada residence in Navi Mumbai at around 2.30 pm.
The severely bleeding Khanderi was rushed to the local Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Hospital, where doctors attending on him described his condition as “critical”.
Though the police have not established as to what prompted him to take the extreme, preliminary investigations have revealed that Khandheri was under extreme depression for the past several days.
Considered one of the leading developers in Navi Mumbai, Khanderi had made huge investments in the construction and real estate business. Even several of his associates and fellow builders had made investments in his business.
The investigators are trying to ascertain if Khanderi’s attempted suicide had anything to do with the problems arising out of the current recession in the real estate business or political and bureaucratic hassles he might have faced while seeking permissions and clearances from the Navi Municipal Corporation (NMC) as it had happened in the case of a Thane builder who killed himself eight months ago.
Khanderi’s attempted suicide appears akin to the shocking manner in which Thane-based builder Suraj Parmar had shot himself dead at his construction site office on October 7 last year.
In his 13-page suicide note, Parmar had alleged that a coterie of local corporators and officials had been harassing him for bribes. He had also alleged that the coterie was trying to stall his various housing projects involving crores of rupees.
A note book left by Parmar in his car, in which he had named corporators who had allegedly taken money from him and were demanding huge bribes from him granting civic clearances and permissions, had opened Pandora’s Box.
Having registered a case of ‘abetment to suicide’ and offences of criminal misconduct under the Prevention of Corruption Act against public servants concerned, the Thane police had arrested four corporators Vikrant Chavan (Congress), Najib Mulla, Hanumant Jagdale (both NCP) and Sudhakar Chavan (independent) of the Thane Municipal Corporation (TMC).
The investigations into the Suraj Parmar suicide case have exposed the nexus between corporators and a section of civic officials, and the corruption prevailing in the civic body in matters relating to the grant of building permissions and clearances.
The four TMC corporators, against whom the Thane police filed a 3,050 page charge-sheet for abetment of suicide and offences under the Prevention of Corruption Act, are currently being tried in a Thane court.