The Enforcement Directorate Tuesday night time arrested Maharashtrawadi Gomantak Get together (MGP) chief and businessman Rohan Harmalkar, who’s alleged to be a mastermind in a multi-crore land rip-off in Goa, for hatching a conspiracy to illegally acceptable land by cast title deeds and promoting a number of properties unlawfully with out the consent of their rightful house owners.
Harmalkar unsuccessfully contested the 2022 Goa Meeting election as an unbiased candidate from the Cumbarjua constituency after he was denied a ticket by the BJP. He joined the MGP in 2024. The arrest comes after ED carried out raids at a number of places on April 24 and 25 below the Prevention of Cash Laundering Act (PMLA) in reference to the alleged rip-off.
Harmalkar was produced in a PMLA courtroom in Goa Wednesday and remanded to ED custody for 14 days. He was beforehand named in two instances of land grabbing, that are being probed by the Goa police’s Particular Investigation Crew (SIT). In November final 12 months, he was arrested by the Goa police for allegedly assaulting a businessman in Arpora.
The ED claimed the searches uncovered incriminating property paperwork, whose estimated present market worth exceeds Rs 1,000 crore — together with cast title deeds — indicating manipulation of land data and fraudulent transfers of high-value land parcels spanning a number of lakhs of sq. metres in prime vacationer hotspots like Anjuna, Arpora and Assagao in Bardez Taluka.
In a press assertion on April 25, ED had mentioned: “The searches had been carried out based mostly on intelligence and subsequent monetary investigation carried out on this case which revealed that one individual specifically Rohan Harmalkar is a key mastermind, who together with different associates resorted to a large-scale conspiracy to illegally acceptable land belonging to rightful house owners by fraudulent means together with impersonation, creation of pretend paperwork, tampering with income data”.
The company alleged these properties, initially owned by people and household estates, had been unlawfully bought with out their consent, inflicting critical monetary and authorized misery to such victims.
“Moreover, authentic paperwork of immovable properties value greater than Rs 600 crore had been seized in the course of the search motion. It was additional unearthed in the course of the search that the proceeds of crime generated had been additional laundered by varied people and benami entities and eventually invested into actual property, luxurious autos and different high-value property. Additional investigation is ongoing to hint the cash path, determine different beneficiaries and the roles of different individuals, together with authorities officers linked with the method of unlawful property transactions,” ED had mentioned.
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The Goa authorities shaped an SIT on June 15, 2022, to research instances of unlawful land switch and land grabbing utilizing cast paperwork. The SIT probed 44 FIRs involving greater than 100 properties – almost 1.5 lakh sq. metres of land – and made 56 arrests (till December 2024), together with some officers from the Archives Division. The state authorities appointed a Fee of Inquiry headed by former Bombay Excessive Court docket choose Justice V Okay Jadhav (Retd) on September 9, 2022, to probe land-grabbing instances.
The Indian Categorical had earlier reported the findings of the report of the Fee of Inquiry. The Inquiry report detailed how authorities data had been tampered with in a “systematic and organised” method and cast sale deeds with Portuguese-era calligraphy had been inserted into the data, allegedly “in connivance with the employees of the Directorate of Archives and Archaeology”.