Realty firm’s managing director among 4 raided

Continuing the probe into the Transferable Development Rights (TDR) scam, the Anti Corruption Bureau (ACB) raided four private individuals here on Saturday, besides searching the offices of Valmark Realty Holdings Pvt Ltd.

The individuals raided were Ratan Babulal Lath, the managing director of Valmark; Amit J Bolar, an employee of Valmark; K Gautham and Munirajappa. Gautham and Bolar were among six people named in the initial FIR filed by the ACB on April 11.

Valmark is a real estate company that bought TDRs from various parties after officials and agents colluded to cheat several individual site owners of the same by various methods.

Sources said the suspects even falsified documents of government lands to get TDRs, causing losses to the BBMP.

The raids were third in a series of search operations carried out by the ACB after the FIR was filed. In the first raid, Krishnalal, a BBMP executive engineer deputed to the BDA, and two middlemen named Amit Jain and Deepak were searched on April 26. Two private surveyors, Abhishek and Manoj, were searched on May 1.

Leaking documents related to the case resulted in the suspension of a second division assistant (SDA) working in the BBMP commissioner’s office recently.

Krishnalal gets bail

Krishnalal, a BBMP executive engineer deputed to the BDA who is accused number one in the first FIR filed in the TDR scam, was granted bail by a city civil court on Saturday.

Krishnalal was an assistant engineer in the TDR division of the BBMP’s Mahadevapura zone when the irregularities were committed.

The official had absconded after the ACB searched his house and filed the bail petition on Friday.

Bellandur fire fuels suspicion

The ACB suspects that unseen hands were at play in the fire that broke out in the BBMP’s Bellandur office early on Friday morning.

“Although BBMP officials maintain that no important document was destroyed in the fire, we have reasons to believe that papers related to the TDR were lost in this so-called accident,” an ACB official told DH, requesting anonymity.

It was a clear case of arson to prevent officials from getting their hands on more documents that would have implicated many other individuals in one of the biggest scams to hit the BBMP, the official said.