The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday arrested former Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Dr Jairaj Phatak and former Additional Chief Secretary (Urban Development-UDD) Ramanand Tiwari for allegedly transgressing regulations in granting sanctions to Adarsh Housing Society on a plot in south Mumbai, earmarked for Kargil War heroes and war-widows.
Both Dr Phatak and Tiwari would be produced before the Special Court (CBI) for getting a formal police custody on Wednesday. With Tuesday’s arrest, the total number of people taken into custody in post-scam investigations has gone to nine.
Earlier in the day, the CBI summoned the two senior bureaucrats to question them on the details of the irregularities that resulted in one of the biggest scams to rock the city.
The arrest late on Tuesday evening comes in the wake of allegations that Tiwari, who was suspended last year when he was State Information Commissioner, during his tenure in UDD had allegedly fudged documents and transferred city public transport (BEST) FSI to the society.
Dr Phatak, a member secretary in Western Maharashtra Regional Welfare Board, as a city municipal chief, had allegedly granted the floor space index (FSI) of BEST plot in Colaba to the society helping it raise the building from six-storey to 31-storey.
CBI Joint Director (Western Region) Rishi Raj Singh said that the announcement of the arrest was declared late in the day as “sanction was needed not just for prosecution, but even for arresting a senior government official.”
The two accused were already grilled last week; their detention and subsequent arrest was expected this week. Both officers as a quid pro quo had received flats for manipulating and clearing the files pertaining to the transfer of Defence Ministry land to a civilian society and doling out extra FSI in violation of all norms.
Last month, another serving IAS officer -Pradeep Vyas- was taken into custody on evidence that he, as a collector of Mumbai, had allegedly connived with other accused in accepting forged documents as proof of income for granting membership to ineligible people. The deal resulted in a flat in his wife’s name.