After four years reluctance to expose the nexus of a bank manager and a land shark, who swallowed a valuable piece of land worth crore for mere Rs 20 lakh on the basis of forged documents, the police finally have to arrest the accused.
The fraudsters however succeeded in averting their jail sojourn, thanks to the anticipatory bail. The police have filed charge-sheet against the duo in the court and also investigating against three co-conspirators.
According to the case file in the year 2000, Sanjay Budhia had taken Rs 25 lakh loan from Allahabad Bank, Bilaspur branch for the purpose of acquiring the agency/dealership of ‘Hero Puch’. He had mortgaged the Transport Nagar located 38848 sq ft diverted land owned by his mother lalita Devi Budhia to the bank against the said loan.
The value of the same land was estimated at Rs 1.16 crore by the bank in August 2004.
Even if Sanjay Budhia paid an amount of Rs 12 lakh and was willing to pay the balance amount of the loan, the wilful bank manager Sachindra Verma hatched a conspiracy with the assistance of zone in-charge R K Sharma, officer of tender committee B K Pradhan and Sudhakar Vishwas to sale the land to one Korba businessman Mohanlal Jain allegedly by tampering with the land documents and forged evaluation papers for just Rs 20 lakh while bid offers of other contenders including Sanjay Budhia were overlooked. Thereafter, Sanjay Budhia had filed a case in City Kotwali Korba on 3 June 2009 accusing the bank officials and the land purchaser and others of indulging in forgery, hatching criminal conspiracy and swallowing the land through forged documents.
As the police, even after registering the case, preferred to put it in cold storage instead of working on it, the Budhias filed a complaint with the Bilaspur zone Inspector General of Police, who ordered to hand over the case to special investigation team (SIT) for probing the allegation. The SIT during the course of investigation found enough evidence against bank manager Sachindra Verma and businessman Mohanlal Jain regarding preparation of forged document and tampering with land papers.
The SIT then asked the Kotwali Police to act against the accused. Only after this police were forced to reopen the case after gap of 4 years and arrest the accused, who however were immediately released on personal bonds. The police have also filed charge-sheet against them in the court while investigation against three co-accused, R K Sharma, B K Pradhan and Sudhakar Vishwas, was still on.