Ex-Taleigao talathi held for land scam
HERALD REPORTER
PANJIM, JAN 24
Crime Branch on Saturday afternoon arrested ex-talathi of Taleigao Gurudas N Nagvekar for allegedly cheating and forgery in a major land scam involving 89,000 sq m government plot.
DySP Chandrakant Salgaonkar said Nagvekar, who was talathi between 1996 and 2003, never handed documents pertaining to the plot (Survey No 249/1) to his successor. The said documents pertaining to the land are missing, he stated.
Salgaonkar said the initial complain in the matter was filed by Nelson Cabral and later, after conducting preliminary inquiries the State took cognisance of the case.
He said Nagvekar would be produced in court tomorrow to obtain remand for further investigation.
The Taleigao Bachao Abhiyan had taken up the matter strongly very recently. It had earlier through the Right to Information Act exposed several discrepancies in the shocking land deal.
TBA had questioned how a government-notified land could be sold to private persons. It had found that a file containing to the transaction of the land had gone missing.
It is learnt that the Crime Branch has not ruled out involvement of more persons in the whole episode.
The interested parties in the property is a leading builder and the police suspect that documents missing pertaining to the land is part of the wider conspiracy.
Some social activists from Taleigao said that in many cases in the past, some talathis at village-level, colluded with business interest or landlords in manipulating land records.
