Financial forensic auditors to assess benami properties of sand mafia

Nagpur: City police chief Amitesh Kumar on Tuesday said financial forensic auditors have been roped in to assess and ascertain the ‘benami’ properties worth crores of rupees amassed by the sand mafia.
Apart from busting the sand and narco mafia, he assured the city would have a ‘feel good factor’ by December 31 with crime heads like murder, rioting, hurt, assaults seeing a downward slide unlike any in the last two decades due to his team’s efforts of last one-and-a-half years.
The top cop, who was flanked by additional CPs Navinchandra Reddy, Neeva Jain and hordes of DCPs, said he has also written to the Maharashtra State Mining Corporation to help calculate and quantify the amount of sand stolen and misused by the sand mafia. The entire supply chain is now under the lens of the crime branch.
Kumar, extolling efforts of DCP Chinmay Pandit and his crime branch team, said he has written to various government departments like the railways, PWD, NHAI, zilla parishad, Gosikhurd project, Pench irrigation projects and such government agencies, asking them to check the electronic Transit Pass (eTP) submitted to them while receiving sand from private suppliers who are now under the scanner.
“We have already arrested one in the case filed by MOIL and there could be more actions in the same case now as fake eTPs were misused to supply sand to them,” said the top cop. He added the recent arrest of sand mafia kingpin Amol Khorgade, and other similar actions in different cases, has revealed misuse of almost 990 eTPs issued somewhere else and used elsewhere to steal and supply sand.“Many more arrests and action is on the anvil. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) is preparing to register more offences in sand mafia cases,” said the CP. “We are also keen to know how and where they have parked their ill-gotten profits and how the cash flow was channelised,” said Kumar. He said his aim was to make Nagpur crime free with more than 100 goons booked under Maharashtra Prevention of Dangerous Activities (MPDA) Act and another 100 nabbed under MCOCA.