Mumbai: At the heart of the controversy over the Mithi river desilting project in Mumbai, being carried out by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), is an alleged Rs 65 crore scam. Actor Dino Morea and his brother are among those being questioned in the case.
The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police, along with the Enforcement Directorate (ED), is probing the alleged multi-crore scam, and earlier this month, the police registered a case against 13 persons, including contractors and civic officials.
This has led to significant political fallout with the ruling Mahayuti accusing Shiv Sena (UBT) of corruption, particularly former state minister Aaditya Thackeray.
The 18.3 km river, an arterial water body in the city, originates from Vihar and Powai lakes, which supply water to Mumbai, and flows through the city’s western suburbs before joining Mahim Creek, and from there into the Arabian Sea. This river plays an important role as a natural stormwater drainage channel, carrying excess water during the monsoon.
In 2005, overflow from the river was held as one of the reasons for the Mumbai deluge that claimed more than 1,000 lives. It put the state of the river, particularly the heavy pollution and silt accumulation due to settlements on its banks, in focus.
Since then, BMC has been making efforts to clean the river and free it from silt and garbage before monsoon, to ensure the flow of the river is unobstructed. However, over the years, there have been allegations of corruption in the project.
On 6 May, a First Information Report (FIR) was registered by a special investigation team (SIT) made up of officials from the EOW against 13 persons at Azad Maidan police station. It included five contractors, three middlemen, and two company officials. The FIR said BMC officials created tenders in a way that benefited a certain machinery supplier.
Contractors then allegedly generated fake bills for transportation of the silt outside Mumbai, thereby inflicting a loss of more than Rs 65.54 crore on the civic body, it added.
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What does the FIR say
In the FIR, Mumbai Police named BMC assistant engineer Prashant Ramugade, deputy chief engineers Ganesh Bendre and Prashant Tayshette, as well as Deepak Mohan, Kishore Menon, Jay Joshi, Ketan Kadam and Bhupendra Purohit, directors of Acute Designing, Kailash Construction Company, NA Construction, Nikhil Construction and JRS Infrastructure, respectively. Police are currently probing project work undertaken between 2021 and 2024.
According to the FIR, a copy of which ThePrint has accessed, the alleged offences relate to transportation and dumping of silt, for which police say Acute Designs, Kailash Construction Company, NA Construction, Nikhil Construction and JRS Infrastructure in total submitted nine fake MoUs. BMC officers, the FIR added, did not verify the authenticity of the dumping sites mentioned in the MoUs, thus giving undue advantage to the contractors.
They even approved bills based on fake documents related to the weighbridge and log sheets, the FIR said. The probe revealed that signatures of some of the landowners were forged. In some cases, MoUs were signed with people who did not own any land.
According to the FIR, Deepak Mohan and Kishore Menon, who it said were also part of other companies, offered BMC silt pusher and multipurpose amphibious pontoon machines claiming to be representatives of the machinery supply company Matprop, at a cost of Rs 3.09 crore.
Then, BMC officials visited the Matprop plant in Kerala. The civic body then floated a tender which had the exact same specifications as the Matprop machinery, leaving contractors no other option than to buy from them.
“We have evidence that when the contractor went to Matprop to purchase the machine, they directed him to a middleman who offered to rent the machines for two years for Rs 8 crore, and later settled for Rs 4 crore,” DCP Sangramsinh Nishandar told the media Tuesday.
The FIR added that Deepak Mohan and Ketan Kadam of Matprop signed the MoUs, but machinery was rented by Virgo Specialities and Voder India for two years for Rs 8 crore—they later settled for Rs 4 crore. They also told the contractors that Jay Joshi is the owner of Virgo Specialities, and Kadam was looking after Voder India.
Interestingly, Kadam is not a partner or director in either Virgo or Voder India but acted like a middleman, as did Joshi. Both were arrested earlier this month.
“This is how Matprop, in collusion with the BMC SWD division officials, forced the contractors to go to these two companies without the MoU and got more financial benefits from the contractors,” the FIR said.
ThePrint reached Matprop via email for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication. This report will be updated if and when a response is received.
The FIR charged BMC officials and contractors with conspiring to benefit from selling these machines at a higher rate. While the rate for desilting earlier was Rs 1,609 per metric ton, with these new machines, it went up to Rs 2,193 per metric ton.
The FIR did, however, add that when BMC vigilance department objected to the inflated rate, the earlier rate was approved. The officials were also accused of making a payment of Rs 17.07 crore to the contractors.
On 26 May, Joshi and Kadam were denied bail, and a court in Mumbai noted that it could not rule out that they would cause “hurdles in the investigation” if released. “If the accused are released on bail, the possibility of causing hurdles in the investigation cannot be ruled out,” the court held.
Dino Morea link
Actor Dino Morea and his brother Santino’s names popped up while going through the calls and financial transactions of Ketan Kadam.
According to the initial investigation, Santino repeatedly spoke to Kadam on the phone.
EOW also found transactions linked to Kadam, which it said were suspicious, and was probing if they were also related to the Morea brothers.
On 26 May, the brothers were questioned for eight hours, followed by another round of questioning on 28 May that went on for five hours.
Politics over the alleged scam
Since the Shiv Sena, before it split in 2022, controlled BMC for the last 25 years, Sanjay Nirupam from the now Eknath Shinde-led Sena allaged a link between the scam and Shiv Sena (UBT) MLA Aaditya Thackeray.
“Everyone in Mumbai knows that during that period, no contract could be awarded without the approval of ‘Matoshree’ (private residence of the Thackerays in Bandra). A total of 18 contractors were appointed for the Mithi river cleaning work during this time,” Nirupam told reporters on 26 May.
“Since (actor) Dino Morea has been questioned (in the scam) and as he is also a known associate of Aaditya Thackeray, his role must be investigated,” Nirupram added.
Thackeray, while speaking to the media Tuesday, said he was happy that the desilting project is being probed. “Whoever is guilty in this, needs to be jailed. In the Shinde regime, many scams took place, this could also be one of them, so let it be investigated.”
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
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