Mithi River desilting fraud: Bail of 2 intermediaries rejected
According to the police, the two arrested accused, Ketan Kadam and Jay Joshi, charged the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) an inflated amount to rent silt pusher machines and dredging equipment supplied by a Kochi-based firm, Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd. The police claimed this was done in connivance with Matprop executives and officials from the BMC's storm water drains department (SWD).
Kadam, 50, is the director of Woder India LLP, a Mumbai-based company that provides desilting services, while Jayesh Joshi, 49, is associated with Virgo Specialties Pvt Ltd, a Mumbai-based industrial product manufacturer.
Kadam and Joshi were among 13 people booked by the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police earlier this month in connection with the alleged fraud. The accused include three BMC officials, three intermediaries, five private contractors, and two private company executives. The fraud, according to the police, involves alleged financial irregularities, inflated tenders, and corrupt practices linked to desilting work for the Mithi River, which allegedly led to a loss of ₹65.54 crore for the BMC.
Joshi denied the charges in court. His lawyers, Dr Yusuf Iqbal and advocate Zain Shroff from YNA Legal LLP, argued that he was an independent investor and infrastructure equipment provider who legally imported and owned the machines. These machines were leased to various contractors according to private agreements without any direct payment or contractual engagement with the BMC, they claimed.
'The machines were not leased to the BMC. There is no financial gain or wrongful benefit to Joshi from BMC or anybody else. As per the allegations, the actual tender beneficiaries—the contractors—and the officials who are allegedly responsible for the tender irregularities remain untouched and were not even investigated. Our client, a third-party private vendor who supplied machines on rent, is being made a scapegoat and dragged into this alleged scam when he is not even remotely associated with the BMC,' Joshi's lawyers told the court.
According to the EOW, here's how the alleged fraud happened: BMC officials visited Kochi in October 2020 to purchase desilting equipment from Matprop. The company allegedly quoted ₹3 crore for silt pusher machines and ₹2 crore for multipurpose amphibious dredging equipment.
However, instead of purchasing the machines, the BMC decided to pay the contractors on a per-metric-tonne basis for the silt and dredge removed from the river, officials said. The BMC officials then floated tenders with the same specifications that Matprop's equipment had, so that any contractor would be required to buy or hire only its machines.
The BMC's tender, in effect, gave a monopoly to Matprop, which was the only manufacturer of machines with those specifications in the country. The company's director, Dipak Mohan, has also been booked in the case.
Then, when the contractors approached Matprop, they were directed to Joshi and Kadam, who, in connivance with Mohan, rented the equipment at inflated rates, according to the police.
Every year, to benefit the contractors and BMC officials involved in the scam, the amount of mud removed from the Mithi River was also increased on paper to cheat the civic body, according to the police.
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