Navi Mumbai: After five months of meticulous probe in the FIR of cheating and forgery registered at Panvel City police station against eight men for allegedly duping a Kharghar builder of nearly Rs 2.3 crore by fraudulently selling him a 47 guntha (approximately 4,755 sq m) parcel of land in Karanjade, which belonged to the deceased brothers Nathan and Shalom Eliyahu Chincholkar, who were Israel natives born in Panvel, police have arrested five of the accused — four of them from Goa and one from Dombivli.The Chincholkar brothers had migrated to Israel decades ago, and passed away in 2011 and 2016, respectively.Bala Kumbhar, senior inspector of Panvel City police station, informed that, acting on a tip off and technical expertise, Suraj Vasudev Shinde, Satish Namdev Shinde and Tejas Pramod Shinde were arrested from Thuvim, Goa. During investigation, it was found that co-accused Manish Manohar More was arrested in a theft case by Mapusa police in Goa and was in the Kolwal Central Jail. He was arrested after obtaining his transit remand. The fifth accused, Vasudev Namdev Shinde, who had posed as Nathan was arrested from Dombivli. Police have also seized from them the fake Aadhaar card and PAN card prepared in the name of Nathan.Kumbhar said, “During the probe, it was found that a case of fraud was also registered against Suraj and Tejas at Uran police station and the court had issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against Suraj . He had been evading arrest by changing his mobile number and place of residence repeatedly and had lived in the states of Maharashtra, Goa, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.“In his complaint, the builder Prashant Patekar (55) said that in 2024, estate agent Amrit Thakur told him that a 47 guntha land located at survey number 81/2 in Karanjade was up for sale, and that the property documents were given to him by an estate agent from Thane, Suraj Shinde. Patekar verified the documents through a lawyer, and found them to be authentic.Patekar said he called the two ‘landowners’ Nathan and Shalom, Shinde, an unidentified agent, and Thakur at his office, and the land sale deal was finalised at Rs 5 lakh per guntha. An MoU was signed, and a purchase notice of the property was published in a local newspaper on June 6, 2024, for objections, if any. The land purchase sale deed agreement was registered at the sub-registrar office, Panvel-1, on August 23, 2024, where the imposters submitted forged property documents and Aadhaar and PAN cards.Patekar told police that he paid the ‘landowners’ Rs 2.3 crore between June 5, 2024, and October 7, 2025, via cheque and RTGS.On August 18, 2025, Orian Moses Penkar, who was given power of attorney by Shalom’s son Bechalel on July 16, 2025, at the Indian Embassy in Tel Aviv, sent a notice to Patekar stating that he had fraudulently purchased the land. When Patekar questioned the ‘landowners’ through Shinde, they claimed the complaint was false. Then Aslam Munshi, on behalf of Bethel Israeli Trust’s chief trustee Moses E Jacob Korlekar, approached police alleging that the ‘landowners’ were impostors.Police summoned all parties for the investigation into the land sale application, but Shinde, and the co-accused did not appear for several months.On further enquiries, Patekar found that original farmers, Nathan and Shalom, had migrated to Israel decades ago, and died there. Their heirs resided in Israel and America, and Shalom’s son, Bechalel, had given the power of attorney to Penkar.Nathan’s son Emil Bezanmin alias Chincholkar and his wife Daisy also flew down from Israel for the application inquiry. After examining their documents, Patekar was convinced that he had been cheated. He then filed a complaint against Shinde and the co-accused on February 16.
