MUMBAI: An estate agent who allegedly changed the reservation of a plot in the suburbs and facilitated a businessman and his wife to develop it was arrested by the Mumbai police.
The crime branch arrested the agent, Narshim Puttawallu (50), a resident of Charkop in Malad. Earlier, the Goregaon police had arrested Rupa Bharat Mehta (64) and filed a chargesheet against her.
The complainant Vaibhav Thakur, owns this ancestral agricultural land in Malad. In 2016, Thakur learnt that there was some illegal construction going on at his plot as well as on adjoining plots. He learnt that construction was done by Rupa Mehta. Thakur and his family members then lodged a complaint with the BMC and Malad police station.
The BMC issued a show cause notice to Rupa Mehta, who in her reply, annexed the property documents stating that there was no development work carried out by her. The BMC officials then found out from the land records that alterations were made in the property documents.
The Goregaon police in 2021 registered an offence of cheating, of trust, and criminal conspiracy, and without arresting Rupa Mehta, filed the chargesheet against her and continued the probe.
Later this year, Thakur filed a criminal writ petition before the high court seeking to transfer the probe to the crime branch, which set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT).
The SIT found that Rupa and her husband Bharat had approached agent Puttawallu to get the property papers from the city survey .