Ghaziabad official held for extorting money from property buyers

Ghaziabad, June 16 (IANS) The Ghaziabad police has arrested the Assistant Inspector General (Stamps) for extorting money from property buyers by issuing notices on fake complaints.

AIG (stamps) Rajesh Sharma was arrested for abusing his official position by way of corrupt practices that led to loss of hundreds of crores to the state exchequer, police said.

The police said that Naib Tehsildar Bhupendra Singh lodged a complaint on June 14 (Wednesday) with the Kavinagar police in which he alleged that AIG Rajesh Sharma along with former Sub Registrar Ajay Goel was engaged in extorting money by carrying on office work from Ajay Goel's private residence R-2/231 Rajnagar in Ghaziabad.

The officer was arrested on late Thursday night. He has been presented before the court which remanded him to 14 days judicial custody.

Two complaints were filed in the district magistrate's office against Rajesh Sharma by Rajesh Upadhyay, president of Deed Writer Association, and Anil Chaudhary, an advocate who alleged that the officer was running his office from a private place and had taken the official computer, scanner, printer and other official documents to the private residence from where he used to manage complaints by fake names on which basis he used to issue notices to property buyers whose documents came to his office for screening after getting registered at the sub registrar office.

The FIR states that the officer had taken all the data from his office in a pen drive to the private place. The FIR further states that if the property buyers did not offer bribe beforehand, the officer used to lodge cases in civil courts and forced them to come to a compromise by bribing him.

Hence he used to extort money from innocent property buyers, the FIR states.

The FIR states that the officer had slashed the collector's circle rate drastically due to which the state suffered a huge loss in several hundred crores.

The complainant presented a citation in the FIR that the officer AIG (stamps) Rajesh Sharma had slashed the collector's circle rate of RED Mall at New Bus Stand from Rs 1,50,000 to Rs 75,000 - which is half of the prevailing rate. There were other such instances of this nature.

The police said the documents suggests that the former District Magistrate Nidhi Kesarwani bypassed the ADM Finance and ordered to resolve the dispute directly as she delegated the power to him so in this sequence her unsigned order was found uploaded on the computer. So through such tricks he managed huge money and incurred huge loss to the state exchequer.

Earlier, to establish the allegations the city magistrate ordered a search warrant on which basis a raid was conducted at R-2/231 at Ajay Goel's residence where the AIG (stamps) Rajesh Sharma and Ajay Goel were found engaged in operating computers.

The computer expert Rahul Tyagi opened the system and found that an unsigned order of former District Magistrate Nidhi Kesarwani was uploaded on the computer. The Sub Inspector Dharmendra Lamba was called and a recovery memo was prepared after which the official seals, computer, printer and other documents were seized and were attached as a case property before filing the FIR.

The Ghaziabad District Magistrate Ministhy S. Nair on June 15 had recommended the suspension of the guilty officer. He is likely to be suspended since he had been arrested under grave sections 420, 467, 468, 471 of the IPC and 67 of the Information Technology Act, in the case filed by the state officer Naib Tehsildar Bhupendra Singh.

A private complaint has also been registered under section 383, 504 and 506 of IPC filed by a person, Brijesh Sharma, who alleged that Rajesh Sharma and Ajay Goel demanded Rs 10 lakh from him and asked to bring Rs 10 lakh from a client, Ashutosh Joshi.

The FIR states that the complainant Brijesh Sharma was facing severe mental torture since last two months.

(This story has not been edited by Social News XYZ staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)