Three government officials and associates of an allegedly phoney real estate company, Samruddhi Corporation, were charged by the CID (crime) Surat unit for reportedly creating 486 false property cards of farmers to usurp their land parcels in the nearby villages of Dumas, Gavier and Vanta and create a plotting scheme there.
Acting on a complaint filed by Azad Ramoliya (47), who runs a factory in Ankleshwar and works as a farmer, the police arrested deputy director KP Gamit, superintendent AD Patel, and a data entry operator from the City Survey Superintendent’s office.
A leading daily reported that Ramoliya claimed that between 2017 and 2022, government officials and Samruddhi Corporation promoters created 135 false property cards for his six plots in Dumas and one in Vanta village, along with 351 other properties. He said that despite his repeated complaints to the district collector and other authorities, no offense had been reported yet. He said that the 7/12 extract contained the names of farmers, and that the plots were sold as farmhouses under the Silent Zone concept.
PB Sanghani told the daily: “We have booked three government officials and partners of Samruddhi Corporation for cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy under IPC. We have started collecting evidence against the accused, but no arrests have been made yet.”
Ramoliya mentioned that he purchased the six plots from Magdalla farmer Rasik Lallubhai in 2016 and 2017. The 7/12 extract of every parcel contained Ramoliya’s and the names of his family members. A land broker approached him in 2022 with a property card for plot 803 to sell the land.
Ramoliya judiciously looked through several government documents and discovered, much to his astonishment, that a large number of property cards were registered on parcels of land that he and his family-owned. Ramoliya added that on August 17, 2022, he contacted the collectorate, the municipal commissioner, the prant officer, the mamlatdar, and the DILR, among others. He said that he filed a complaint with the Detection of Crime Branch (DCB), but it was closed without any action last year.
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