TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has filed a chargesheet against 36 persons in money laundering case linked to the land grabbing cases in the State.
The chargesheet has been filed before the Special Court at Mapusa, under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.
The over 4,750 pages includes statements of complainants and 36 witnesses.
Mohammed Suhail of Davengere-Karanatka Rajkumar Maithi of Miramar, Vikrant Shetty of Gogol-Margao, Royson Rodrigues of Marna-Siolim, who were arrested by the SIT of Goa Police are among 36 accused named in the chargesheete. Four accused including prime accused Suhail have been shown as untraceable.
The ED has sought prosecution of these accused under the PMLA and has also informed that it might file supplementary chargesheet in the future.
Based on a complaint received in Directorate of Enforcement, Panjim Zonal Office, wherein it was informed that three FIRs were lodged at the Mapusa police station in May 2022 and two cases in June 2022 in connection with illegal grabbing of land and prima-facie it appeared that accused persons had committed the scheduled offences as defined under Section 2(1)(y) of PMLA and derived proceeds of crime suspected to have been laundered, and as offences under Section 419, 420, 467 and 471 of IPC invoked in the said FIRs being the scheduled offences under Part A of the Schedule to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002 During the course of investigation, it revealed that there were a total of 41 FIRs being investigated in connection with illegal land grabbing by the Goa Police.
The accused hatched a criminal conspiracy and indulged in impersonation, cheating, forging and fabricating the land records and using the same as genuine and had illegally acquired/grabbed immovable properties thereby deriving proceeds of crime as defined under section 2(1)(u) of PMLA and projected the same as untainted and also sold some of the illegally acquired properties by projecting the same also as untainted and derived proceeds of crime also in the form of cash by indulging in the above said criminal activities relating to the scheduled offence.
According to the ED, Mohammed Suhail colluded with Rajkumar Maithi, Vikrant Shetty and others and hatched a criminal conspiracy to grab the large tracts of lands belonging to persons who had rightfully inherited the property.
They had taken the help of other accused in order to show the illegal land grab in their names as genuine and legal by promising to give them huge amounts and they were made to give marriage certificates, birth certificates, death certificates of their ancestors and the birth certificates and marriage certificates of themselves in order to forge and fabricate the succession records as well as the land records to show the inheritance as genuine.
Further they had also conspired with the officers/officials of the Department of Archives to allow them access to the revenue/land records so that they could replace/insert the forged/fabricated documents in the revenue records.
The accused persons also fabricated documents using the names of the ancestors of their associates and created documents to show that the actual owners of the properties had long back sold the said properties to the ancestors of these associates and the said properties were projected to be legally inherited
Investigations conducted under PMLA also revealed that there are various properties which have been acquired illegally by these fraudsters in collusion with each other and got it mutated in the name of their associates.
The accused illegally acquired property and sold it for crores of rupees and the main accused received consideration amount in cash.
The ED has attached 31 immoveable properties which are valued at Rs 535 as per the market rates.
