Rajkot: A land-grabbing racket allegedly disguised as an agricultural lending network has come under intensified scrutiny in Saurashtra, with police identifying 13 complainants so far and uncovering transactions involving 126 bighas of farmland valued at about Rs 40 crore.The probe stems from an FIR registered at Paddhari police station against Alpesh Donga, Akshit Akbari alias Happy Patel and their associates, who are accused of luring farmers with promises of loans against agricultural land and then securing ownership of the properties through sale deeds.According to investigators, documents examined so far indicate that the accused may have acquired control of agricultural land worth around Rs 40 crore. Police believe the scale of the alleged fraud could increase as more records are scrutinised.Rajkot Rural superintendent of police Vijay Singh Gurjar has constituted a special investigation team (SIT) to determine the full extent of the operation. The team is headed by assistant superintendent of police Simran Bhardwaj and includes officers from the local crime branch and Cybercrime police station.Police suspect more than 150 farming families across the region may have been targeted.Investigators say the accused operated call centres in Rajkot and Ahmedabad under various names and would call farmers and offer agricultural loans at attractive interest rates. During the raid on the premises, police recovered land records, sata-khat agreements, signed cheques, call records and databases containing details of prospective borrowers.Speaking to reporters, Shailesh Sojitra, a farmer from Nikava village in Jamnagar district, alleged that he was approached in 2025 with an offer of a Rs 20 lakh loan.Sojitra said that while he believed he was signing a sata-khat (agreement to sell), a sale deed for land he estimated to be worth around Rs 5 crore was executed instead. He said that when he protested, members of the syndicate threatened him with the loss of his land if he approached the police.The investigation also revealed that several land transactions were executed in the names of third parties, police said.Cybercrime officials recovered extensive contact databases at the call centres. One database contained phone numbers of around 4,800 individuals. Investigators are contacting those listed to determine if they were approached with loan offers and whether any of them suffered losses.Police sought assistance from sub-registrar offices to verify land records and examine sata-khat agreements seized during the investigation.Donga was recently arrested in connection with the case. A magistrate’s court rejected the police’s plea for five days of custodial interrogation, after which police filed a revision petition before a sessions court. Efforts are continuing to trace co-accused Akshit Akbari alias Happy Patel.Officials said the audit of land records is still underway and additional transactions are being examined, raising the possibility that the number of affected families and the value of the alleged land transfers could increase further.
