Fresh FIR against Aranha for forgery

PCMC RTO files plaint against 6 over fake docus of 2 high-end cars

The director of Rosary School and Junior College, Camp, Vinay Aranha was arrested on Tuesday by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Pimpri-Chinchwad police for preparing and presenting forged documents to the Regional Transport Office (RTO) to register his two high-end cars. While the police sought his custody, on Wednesday, the Judicial Magistrate First Class granted him interim bail till March 22, offering to hear the grounds for police custody after that.

The FIR filed on Tuesday, incidentally, is the second case registered against Aranha in a span of three months. While the complainants in the two FIRs are different, they are linked, with the earlier one filed in November 2020, leading to the fresh one.

The latest FIR filed with Bhosari MIDC police has booked Aranha, along with realty agent Sandip Kamble, advocate Sagar Suryawanshi, former chairman of Seva Vikas Bank, Amar Mulchandani, Ashwin Kamat and Bhalla Kamble under sections 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 466 (forgery of court record or public register), 467 (forgery of valuable security, etc), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (fraudulently using forged document as genuine) of the Indian Penal Code. The complaint was filed by Manoj Otari, the RTO of PCMC accusing the group of submitting a false agreement to register two high-end cars.

This complaint is the by-product of the police investigation of the first complaint filed with Hnjawadi police in November, wherein 51-year-old Prasad Nalawade, a former employee of Rosary, alleged that Aranha had misused the former’s identity to seek a loan from Seva Vikas Bank.

According to his complaint, Nalawade had approached Aranha for money back in 2014, who promised to facilitate a loan from Seva Vikas Bank. While Nalawade had filled out the loan application and given it to Aranha, he did not avail of the loan as he’d managed to procure the money elsewhere. However, in March 2020 he got a notice from the sub-registrar of the co-operatives department for recovery of some pending loan amount. Astounded, when Nalawade enquired with the bank, he realised that Arahna, who was in possession of his earlier loan application, had impersonated him to procure a Rs 1.60-crore loan from the bank to buy two high-end cars.

He filed a complaint with the Hinjawadi police. However, the accused approached Bombay High Court (HC) for a stay on the matter. Hinjawadi police, investigating the case, alerted PCMC RTO about the forged documents, triggering the new FIR. According to EOW officials, at the time of purchasing the contentious Mercedes Benz and Range Rover Evoque, the accused furnished fake residential address proofs in Nalawade’s name to PCMC RTO. EOW also submitted that there are seven cases registered against Aranha and the others at Hinjawadi, Pimpri, Lashkar, Viman Nagar and Shivajinagar police stations when he was produced before the Judicial Magistrate First Class AU Supekar.

Opposing the demand for police custody, Aranha’s advocate Nilesh Ojha argued, “He was falsely implicated in the case. First, an FIR was registered with Pimpri police station, second at Hinjawadi police station and now this third one. The Hinjawadi FIR is not maintainable, and we challenged it in Bombay HC and the court directed the cops do not take coercive steps against the accused. Yet, a third FIR has been filed on the basis of same allegations, so this too is not maintainable.” He urged the court to release Aranha on interim bail.

However, assistant public prosecutor Kundalik Chaure, seeking a sevenday police custody, contended, “Both the offences are separate as are the complainants and their allegations. In this case, the accused created forged documents and produced them to a government authority to register two vehicles. PCMC RTO has filed the complaint.”

Speaking to Mirror, police inspector Vasant Babar of EOW reiterated, “Custodial interrogation is necessary to investigate who prepared the forged papers and who signed them and if there are more people involved in the case.”

The court, however, granted Aranha interim bail until March 22, stating that the grounds for his police custody would be examined after this period.