Police officials revealed on Friday that Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran had fallen victim to a ₹1 crore fraud involving the submission of a counterfeit bank guarantee. A case has been registered against the accused contractor at the Bund Garden police station, with the incident spanning from December 2022 to the past Friday.
The accused, identified as Babasaheb Jaywant Samat (52) from Shevgaon, Ahmednagar, found himself facing legal action after Sub-Divisional Engineer Shrikant Madhukar Raut (57) from the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran at the Tilak Road Regional Office filed a complaint in this matter.
Samat, who is a contractor of Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran, had bid for retrofitting work on a water supply scheme in Vadgaon Rasai, Sadalgaon. The authorities had estimated the value of the tender at ₹1.36 crore, and Samat secured the job through the tender process. As per the rules, he was obligated to provide a bank guarantee with ₹1.14 crore in his bank account. However, he resorted to fabricating documents and generating a fake bank guarantee letter, falsely claiming to possess the required funds in his account. This fraudulent letter was then submitted to the Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran in an attempt to deceive the government, and an effort was made to transfer ₹1.33 crore from the authority into Samat's own bank account.
In response, a complaint was lodged at the Bund Garden police station, leading to a subsequent investigation and the registration of a case. Further investigations are currently underway.
