CBI maps Malhotra's money trail

Vishwa Mohan / TNN / Nov 18, 2007, 01:12 IST

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CBI on Saturday filed the second chargesheet against the chhole vendor-turned-millionaire Ashok Malhotra, revealing for the first time the 'bribe-sharing mechanism' among 10 MCD officials.

NEW DELHI: CBI on Saturday filed the second chargesheet against the chhole vendor-turned-millionaire Ashok Malhotra, revealing for the first time the ‘bribe-sharing mechanism’ among 10 MCD officials, including a retired additional commissioner, for allowing the land scam kingpin to allegedly grab plots meant for the resettlement of poor slum dwellers in the Capital.
The agency, in its chargesheet filed against 12 persons in connection with a case pertaining to plots in Molarband Phase-II in north Delhi, claimed that Malhotra had allegedly grabbed 180 plots (each of 20.9 sq metres) in connivance with MCD officials and sold them for over Rs 5 crore using forged documents.
The basic arithmetics, disclosed in the chargesheet, showed that Malhotra and his associate Ashok Jain were ‘‘allotted’’ the plots at the rate of Rs 7,000 per plot. They, however, sold each plot for nearly Rs 3 lakh in the open market, making about Rs 5.4 crore. All the 10 accused MCD officials, who helped him grab these plots illegally, received Rs 10,000 each per plot as their share of the booty.
Incidentally, these officials used to regularly visit Malhotra at his Mukherjee Nagar residence and personally hand him over official documents like possession letters and allotment letters.

The scamster, in fact, used to grab the plots by submitting fake ration cards, identity cards, survey registers, photographs and bank challans in the name of non-existent applicants. He subsequently used to sell these plots on the basis of forged general powers of attorney and cash receipts, making crores of rupees in the deal.
Besides Malhotra and Jain, the 10 accused chargesheeted in the Molarband case are: retired additional commissioner Bhubneshwar Singh, director S N S Sidhu, deputy director Philip Toppo, assistant director Sumer Chand Garg, upper division clerk Atul Vashist, under secretary (Delhi vidhan sabha) Lalmani and two other officials R S Sandhu and Ram Chander Arora.

‘‘Lalmani used to be the one who procured forged documents for Malhotra whereas the other officials used to hand them over to Malhotra on a regular basis at his residence,’’ CBI alleged. The chargesheet was filed in the court of special judge S K Kaushik. The court fixed November 23 as the next date of hearing for consideration of the chargesheet and ordered the accused, including Malhotra, to surrender in the court on that day.
All the accused have been charged under sections 120-B (criminal conspiracy), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery of a valuable security), 468 (forgery for the purpose of cheating) and 471 (using a forged document as genuine) of the IPC. The case was registered on August 16.
The first chargesheet against Malhotra was filed on November 5 in connection with the Dheerpur Phase-I case, registered on July 24.
‘‘He had adopted a similar modus operandi while grabbing plots in Dheerpur Phase-I in north Delhi which were meant for resettling slum dwellers of Hudson Line and Outram Line near Kingsway Camp,’’ said a senior CBI official.
vishwa.mohan@timesgroup.com

About the Author

Vishwa Mohan

Vishwa Mohan is Senior Editor at The Times of India. He writes on environment, climate change, agriculture, water resources and clean energy, tracking policy issues and climate diplomacy. He has been covering Parliament since 2003 to see how politics shaped up domestic policy and India’s position at global platform. Before switching over to explore sustainable development issues, Vishwa had covered internal security and investigative agencies for more than a decade.

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