11 booked for forging documents of Rs 35 crore land

Rajkot: In yet another case of land-grabbing using fake documents, at least 11 people were booked in Jamnagar for forging papers of Rs 35 crore land owned by a former employee of Gujarat Maritime Board (GMB).
Chandrakant Barot, a resident of Amba-Vijay Society in Jamnagar, and former GMB employee, lodged a complaint against Jayesh Patel, Ramdev Nandaniya, Dolat Nandaniya, Pravin Chovatiya, Chandrakant Sanghani, Pravin Kandoriya, Manish Rathod, Ashok Dhokiya, Mumbai-based notary D S Kundaring and lawyer D S Pandey for forging documents to alter land records.Police has also named one employee of sub-registrar office at zone-II of Jamnagar in the complaint for being an accessory to the crime.
All the accused have been booked under various sections of Indian Penal Code including 467 (forgery of valuable security, will), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) among others.
Jayesh is a history-sheeter and an accused in Rs 100 crore land document forgery case that was detected by the police last month. At least 18 cases including those of kidnapping, cheating, and forgery have been lodged against him in Jamnagar city alone.
According to Barot, he and his brother Pravin Barot had inherited 24 bigha land in Sidhhi Park near Mehulnagar in Jamnagar. Six months ago, they put the piece of land for sale. "Number of brokers had approached us for the land deal. One of them was Jayesh. He and his partners finalized the deal and gave Rs 50,000 as token amount. They asked me to come to their office with land documents to finalize the deal. After I gave them some documents, they cancelled the deal out of the blue," Barot said in his complaint.
"Last month, when I read about Rs 100 crore land document forgery case, I recognized the names of Jayesh Patel, Ramdev and Dolat who had come to purchase my land. I immediately inquired about my property with the sub-registrar in Jamnagar. To my shock, the land documents were found to be in somebody else's name," he added.
Last month, Jamnagar police had booked 13 people including sub-registrar of Jamnagar for allegedly forging documents of land worth Rs 100 crore in Jamnagar. The accused had forged document of land owned by real estate developer V P Mehta.
"We have booked the accused and are probing the case. Some of the accused are the same as those in the Rs 100 crore forgery case," said C N Parmar, police inspector, C-Division police station, Jamnagar.