The CBI has unearthed a major racket in unauthorised allotment of Delhi Development Authority (DDA) plots in Madanpur Khadar by its officials in connivance with touts and brokers.
The agency has so far detected 85 unauthorised entries of plots in the land-management records.
Among those named as accused are then DDA Land Management Branch’s Assistant Director, Sudhanshu Ranjan, then Senior Secretariat Assistant, Ajeet Kumar Bhardwaj, and former security guard Darwan Singh, besides Iqbal Hussain, Sunil Kumar Meena, Sapan Kumar, Jamaluddin, Rajwant Singh and Shakuntla Devi.
In August last year, the agency had arrested Mr. Ranjan and the other two DDA officials for allegedly receiving ₹1 lakh in bribe from a person buying a plot.
The latest case is an outcome of the probe into the earlier one. It is alleged that Mr. Ranjan and the other DDA employees under scrutiny took bribes from brokers and touts to show allotment of plots in Madanpur Khadar in the office records.
A private person named Sapan Kumar was roped in to make the entries in the land-management registers.
He would also put his thumb impression, projecting himself as an allottee.
The accused officials would employ various methods to make false entries. They would use the empty spaces in registers, overwrite, make double entries, combine two registers and make use of the available space, even tear off the pages with original entries in registers and paste new ones for the purpose. Photographs of the genuine allottees were also morphed for use.
The agency has extracted a recorded conversation from Mr. Ranjan’s mobile phone in which he, while talking to a DDA data entry operator on May 6, 2020, allegedly confessed to having committed the offence.
The bribe amount would be decided by him and at his instance, the other two accused DDA employees would receive it from the interested parties. In order to evade detection and any liability in the future, the accused officials would create backdated records. During the searches last year, the agency seized original documents with respect to 10 properties and recorded oral testimonies of the occupants of DDA plots.
The CBI has got hold of a video clip purportedly showing that accused Sunil Meena was involved in the racket. It has also gathered evidence against other brokers and touts.
