Former Corporator Arrested for Impersonating Dadar Resident in Naigaon Land Grab
A former corporator has been arrested after forging the identity documents of a 90-year-old Dadar resident to illegally sell 6,000 square metres of cooperative housing society land in Naigaon. Sitaram Gupta was arrested yesterday following a police investigation into a fraudulent land-grabbing scheme that was first registered on June 27.
According to Senior Police Inspector Sanjay Hazare of the Naigaon police station, Gupta and his accomplice, Micheal Moses, allegedly used a forged Aadhaar card and other identification documents to impersonate Leslie John Hector Lobo, a 90-year-old resident of Dadar. By doing so, they prepared fake documents to "purchase" the land from the Citizen Co-operative Housing Society and sell it to builders.
The fraud came to light after two builders, Satish Tiwari and Sanjay Sharma, who had purchased the land from Gupta, entered into a financial dispute and approached the police. The builders claimed they had purchased the land from Lobo in 2024 and registered it under their names.
Upon investigation, the Naigaon police discovered that the documents presented by the builders were entirely forged. The land actually belonged to the Citizen Co-operative Housing Society, which was founded in 1994-95 to provide housing for the Christian community.
The police contacted the society and reached out to Lobo, one of the original directors. Due to his advanced age and ill health, Lobo, who lives in Dadar, had given power of attorney to 71-year-old Brian Dominic Menezes. Menezes filed the official police complaint after discovering that the scamsters had sold a 6,000-square-meter plot near the mangroves—which cannot be developed—to the builders, who then constructed illegal chawls on it.
Based on the complaint, the Naigaon police registered an FIR against Gupta, Moses, Tiwari, and Sharma on June 27. Moses was arrested on Sunday, and Gupta was arrested yesterday. Police Inspector Hazare stated that since Gupta had previously been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing last year for a separate land fraud case, the police will seek his custody to further investigate this matter.
