Indore: In fight against pandemic corruption, it is always inspiring for honest citizens to find an incident where Right to Information (RTI) Act served as the strongest tool in exposing corrupt officers and practices, yielding surprising results. Recent findings of a city based management professional would certainly send shockwaves through the administration and also the common man.
Assistant general manager in Ultratech Cement, Ajit Pinge, who has been fighting a legal battle against some city-based builders for quite some time, too was shocked to find that they were duping people in the garb of an authorised builders’ association under the nose of administration.
After finding all the doors of help closed in his fight against three renowned builders of the city for allegedly selling him the same property already sold to different other people, Pinge used RTI to gather evidence to support his legal battle.
“I am not the one, who has been duped; but there are many like me who fell prey to these corrupt builders. With the help of RTI provisions, I have found that a large number of cases of fraud and bullying has been registered against them in multiple police stations. But surprisingly, they still have an image of renowned builders in the city,” Pinge said.
Unfolding the story from Adams; Pinge and his wife Vridula Pinge, who works with a nationalised bank, had decided to buy a property as an investment, like every couple does to secure their economic future. The couple had contacted city-based Swastik builders’ Sandeep Srivastava, who was also the president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers’ Associations of India (CREDAI), and his partners Aman Sehgal and Ankit Srivastava in 2011 for the purpose.
“The accused had taken Rs 13.30 lakh from us on an agreement to give possession of a flat in New Classic Hills, Ganeshpuri and also, execute registration of the property. But, to our utter surprise they later sold the flat to Gyanchand and Kiran Sakle in Rs 26 lakhs,” Pinge said.
On confronting, the trio did not clarify the issue and rather, started avoiding the couple. However, the couple came to know about the fraud only after receiving a notice from bank, confirming no such property was registered in their name.
“We filed a case against the builders in Madhya Pradesh High Court, which is still pending. We didn’t get expected support from police who unnecessary delayed investigation and did not even provide crucial information to the court, the reason know only to the powers that be,” the couple rued. Moreover, despite an order by the high court asking prosecution officer to inform court if any other cases are registered against the accused in other police stations, they didn’t submit the report even after many months.
“After losing hope on the system, I initiated a probe on my own and submitted RTI queries to find out the truth. I had also filed an application with DIG office and asked many police stations to provide details of cases registered against them, but they did not respond. Which shocked me more was that I have found that several cases of fraud have been registered against the builders in MIG police station, Lasudia police station, Heera Nagar police station and even with the Economic Offence Wing (EOW),” Pinge said.
During the struggle in getting evidence, Pinge also found that the centralised public information system of city police was a total failure as he was asked to apply RTI separately in each police station. “However, I have been compensated by the builders through consumer forum, but the fight is not just about getting compensation, but to save others as well and to make people aware about the fraudsters, who dupe the hard earn money of innocent people wearing a clear image,” Pinge said while thanking the RTI Act with the help of which he could expose the corrupt people as well as the system that harbours them.
EOW too takes cases of monetary offences
During the struggle in exposing the corrupt builders, Pinge also learnt that Economic Offence Wing (EOW) also has registered a case against the Swastik group for involving in many monetary frauds or loss to government exchequer. “Most of the people are unaware of the fact that except criminal charges, EOW can take action against any kind of financial fraud related to property or harming government assets and revenue” Pinge said.
