Ghaziabad: Police busted a gang that cheated people under the pretext of selling land and arrested 10 people, including a former lekhpal. The accused used forged documents to claim ownership of land worth crores and were trying to sell it.On Sunday, Rajkumar Agarwal filed a complaint at the Sahibabad police station alleging he was informed by locals that a man named Surendra Singh was attempting to sell a plot of land worth around Rs 100 crore in Arthala village owned by Agarwal through fraudulent means.DCP (trans-Hindon/city) Dhawal Jaiswal said that police registered an FIR under sections of fraud and forgery and formed a team to investigate. On Monday, 10 people were arrested.The accused are Surendra Singh (70), Ramesh Purohit (68), Venkate Balkrishna Dhakpade (31), Satveer Singh (60), a retired lekhpal, Arun Kumar Shivalal (51), Raje Khan (31), Jakir Hussain (38), Sadiq (40), Hanuman Singh (42), and Ali Jafar (32).Surendra Singh told cops that he has known retired lekhpal Satveer Singh for around 20 years. When Satveer was in service, he met Shashi Gupta, who is a broker. Satveer told Gupta about Agarwal’s plot in Arthala village lying vacant for some time. Gupta sent her associate Venkate Balkrishna Dhakpade to Satveer to discuss the land. They found that the plot was registered in the revenue records as transferable and began hatching a plot to sell it fraudulently.The DCP said that the accused also filed a report regarding the loss of the original documents related to the identified property on Sept 27, 2024, at the crime branch in Delhi. A notice was subsequently published in a Faridabad newspaper on Sept 26, 2024.“The accused were in the process of obtaining the documents from the concerned department when they were arrested. When we checked their phones, we found copies of the fraudulent FIR filed with Delhi’s crime branch, newspaper cuttings, land documents, complete documents of the real Agarwal, and information about the dates of birth and dates of death of all the members related to Agarwal’s family,” the DCP added.
