The Ghaziabad Police has arrested Assistant Inspector General (AIG) of Department of Stamps, Ghaziabad, Rajesh Sharma for abusing his official position by indulging in corrupt practices and causing a loss of over Rs 100 crore to the State exchequer.
The AIG was produced before the magistrate on Friday and was sent to 14 day’s judicial custody, a police official said.
The arrest was made late on Thursday night after an enquiry ordered by the District Magistrate indicted the AIG for circumventing rules to favour builders and in the process causing losses to the exchequer on stamp duty.
Also, the AIG was found involved in running a racket of extortion and used to serve notices on property owners for undervaluing and then took huge amounts in bribes.
Police have also recovered 70 mobile handsets from his flat no 903 in Prateek Tower Crossing Republik. It is understood that the AIG used to call from different numbers to extort money and never used his official phone number. Besides, the officer was extorting money by issuing notices to property buyers on fake complaints.
Police said the Naib Tehsildar Bhupendra Singh lodged a complaint on June 14, 2017 with Kavinagar police station in which he alleged that Sharma, along with former sub registrar Ajay Goel, was engaged in extorting money by carrying office work from Ajay Goel’s private residence Atar-2/231 Rajnagar in Ghaziabad.
Two complainants were filed in DM ‘s office against the erring officer by Rajesh Upadhyay the president of Deed Writer Association and advocate Anil Chaudhary who alleged that the officer was running his office from a private place and had taken the official computer, scanner, printer and other official documents to that place (R-2/231) from where he used to manage complaints by fake names on which basis he used to issue notices to the property buyers whose documents came to his office for screening after getting registered at sub registrar office.
The FIR states that the officer had taken all the data from his office in a pen drive to the private place and his subordinates were furnishing him documents.
The FIR states that if the property buyers did not offer bribe, the AIG used to lodge cases in civil courts and forced them to come to the table and extorted huge sums from them.
The FIR further states that the officer had reduced District Collector’s’s Circle Rate drastically and caused huge loss to the state exchequer. Sharma had slashed circle rate of RED Mall at New Bus Stand from Rs 1, 50,000 to Rs. 75,000- which is half of the prevailing rate. There were other such instances of this nature.
Police said the documents suggest that the former District Magistrate Nidhi Kesarwani bypassed the ADM Finance and passed an order to delegate power to the AIG. Emboldened with the DM’s orders, the AIG used to resolve disputes. A copy of this unsigned order was found in the computer of the AIG.
Earlier the City Magistrate issued a search warrant and raid was conducted at R-2/231 at Ajay Goel’s residence where the AIG stamps Sharma and Goel were found engaged in operating a computer. Rahul Tyagi, a computer expert who was part of the raiding party, opened the system and found that an unsigned order of former DM Nidhi Kesarwani was uploaded on the computer. Sub Inspector Dharmendra lamba prepared a recovery memo and computer, printer and other documents were seized and were attached as a case property
Ministhy S Nair the DM of Ghaziabad had on June 15 recommended the suspension of the AIG after he had been arrested under sections 420/ 467/ 468/ 471 /477, of IPC. Another FIR has been lodged section 383/ 504/ 506 of IPC on the complaint of one Brijesh Sharma who alleged that AIG Sharma and Goel demanded Rs. 10 lakh from him and asked to bring Rs 10 lakh from another person Ashutosh Joshi.