Ex-official of bank, among three, booked for duping flat buyers of over Rs 4 crore

PTI, Jun 15, 2024, 10:16 AM IST

Police have registered a case against three persons, including a developer and a former senior official of a co-operative bank, in Maharashtra’s Thane city for allegedly cheating 18 persons to the tune of over Rs 4 crore under the pretext of giving them flats, an official said on Saturday.
The fraud took place between February 2017 and June 2024, he said.
The accused were identified as Santosh Baburao Waghmare alias Tigerbhai, owner and partner of several construction firms, Vinayak Digambar Wakankar, former assistant general manager of the co-operative bank and Jagdish Bhale, the then senior clerk in the bank, he added.
As per the complaint, Waghmare had promised to hand over flats to the victims in his projects and taken money from them. He, along with the other accused, later got loans sanctioned from the bank by forging their signatures and indulged in a fraud to the tune of Rs 4,10,91,273.
Once the loan was sanctioned by the bank, the money used to be deposited into the bank accounts of Waghmare’s firms without the knowledge of the victims. As the accused failed to give them the flats, the victims realised that they had been cheated. One of the victims then approached the police and lodged the complaint.
Based on the complaint, the Rabodi police registered the case on Thursday under Indian Penal Code (IPC) sections 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 465, 467 and 468 (all pertaining to forgery), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and others, the police said.