Mumbai’s anti-corruption crusaders at EOW have unleashed a 7,000-page supplementary chargesheet in the Rs 65.5 crore Mithi River silt scam, filed Wednesday at Esplanade’s Kila Court. Arrested operatives Mahesh Purohit and Sunil Upadhyay stand accused, fortified by 39 witness accounts detailing their forgery spree.
The plot? Cooking up fake MoUs with farmers’ identities to snag dumping site nods, then cashing in on fictitious silt removal bills. This 10-year charade from 2013-2023 hooked BMC officials into approving payouts for ghost work on the flood-prone river.
Echoing last November’s indictment of Mandeep Enterprises’ Rathore—with bogus weigh-ins and logs—the fresh filing amplifies the fraud’s scale. Arrests began with Rathore in August, snowballing post-SIT alerts to EOW.
What was billed as a monsoon savior project morphed into a loot fest: funds flowed for paperwork alone, leaving silt piled high. This exposes glaring lapses in civic accountability, fueling demands for overhaul.
As legal eagles pore over the tome, the scandal reverberates, questioning BMC’s stewardship. Expect further detentions as the EOW peels back corruption’s veil, aiming to salvage public trust and Mumbai’s resilience against rains.