Palghar, Nov 29 (PTI) Police have arrested the president of a local governing body at Vikramgad in Maharashtra’s Palghar district after alert officials of a leading public sector bank foiled his attempt to siphon off Rs 111 crore through submission of forged documents, officials said on Saturday.
The accused, Nilesh alias Pinka Ramesh Padwale, who is the president of Vikramgad Nagar Panchayat, also owns O V Construction Company. He was arrested on Friday from neighbouring Thane, they said.
The alleged embezzlement plot came to light on November 7, when a fake request letter from the Public Works Department (PWD) for issuance of a demand draft for Rs 111.63 crore in the name of the construction company was presented at the Jawhar branch of the State Bank of India (SBI), an official said.
The demand letter and accompanying cheque carried the purported signatures of a PWD executive engineer and accountant. But during the scrutiny of the letter, the bank officials grew suspicious as they found several inconsistencies, including the use of word ‘billion’ instead of ‘crore’, the strikingly different style of letter writing, the official said.
The bank staff first tried to verify the request via email but received no response. A vigilant employee then personally visited the Jawhar PWD office, where officials provided mixed and contradictory answers, he said.
The conspiracy was fully exposed when the SBI managers met the executive engineer in person as he said the signature on the letter was not his. The subsequent investigation by the police culminated in the arrest of Padwale, while a case was also filed against one Yajnesh Ambire.
The police have registered the case against the duo under charges of cheating and forgery. PTI COR NP
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