BHOPAL: On a charge that the officials of the Nagar Palika Parishad of Itarsi had sold open land of the government colony and ripped off the amount, the Economic Offences Wing registered a case against the officials on Friday.
The Parishad had constructed the Priyadarshani Nagar Municipal Council Housing Project. The then chief municipal council officer, Suresh Dubey, issued the order in 2016 and gave the charge to sub-inspector, revenue, Sanjiv Shrivastava to handle the sale deed in the absence of inspector, revenue, Sanjay Dixit.
But Shrivastava allegedly misused the power and sold the open area to four buyers and collected an amount of Rs 16 lakh from them. The officer had committed two faults. First, he was not entitled to sell the plots; and, second, he did not deposit the amount in the council account.
The then CMO Dubey and sub-inspector Shrivastava did not take the approval of the council to sell the plots and the land which was sold was land that had been left for the road, for the water well and for the approach road. After the sale of the plot, the building construction section — of which the assistant engineer, RK Joshi, deputy engineer, Santosh Singh Bains, and clerk, Vijay Kumar Malviya were part — gave the approval for the construction of the building to the applicants.
Although the building section had the whole information about the map and the land specifications, they ignored the wrongdoings and, thus, became the part of the scam.
The EOW has registered the case against the then CMO Dubey, who is now dead, Sanjiv Shrivastava, RK Joshi, Santosh Singh, Vijay Kumar and others under sections 420,409,120-B of the IPC and 7(C), 13(1)(A) of the Corruption Act and started the investigations.
