Two persons, alleged middlemen, have been arrested in the Rs 65 crore Mithi river desilting scam, the Mumbai Police said on Wednesday, May 7. The arrested men were identified as Ketan Kadam and Jai Joshi, said a senior official of the Economic Offences Wing of Mumbai Police. On Tuesday, the special investigation team of the EOW, which is probing the case, had conducted searches at the residences and offices of Kadam and Joshi, along with those of BMC officials Prashant Ramgude and Ganesh Bendre and a few contractors.
The official said that after the searches, Kadam and Joshi were taken into custody and would be produced before the court later in the day. Kadam and Joshi were allegedly involved in renting out Matprop's silt pusher machines and multipurpose amphibious pontoon machines to contractors.
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The Mithi River flows through Mumbai. It is alleged that Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) officials tailored the tender for the river desilting contract in such a way that it benefited a particular supplier of machinery. Co-accused Dipak Mohan and Kishore Menon of Matprop allegedly offered 'silt pusher' and multipurpose amphibious pontoon machines to the BMC, costing Rs 3.09 crore.
A team of BMC officials visited the plant in Kerala, and subsequently,y the BMC floated tenders with the exact same specifications, so that any contractor would be required to buy or hire only Matprop machines, as per the investigation. According to the official, the BMC officials and contractors hatched a conspiracy and made maximum use of these machines at an inflated rate.