Nagpur. With the arrest of a person from Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, Nagpur Police on Friday busted an inter-state racket providing fake royalty papers for transporting illegally excavated sand. The sand mafia was causing loss of revenue to the government by using such fake papers and conducting their illegal business smoothly. Police Commissioner Amitesh Kumar said that it was a big racket and sand smugglers of Nagpur district were also in contact with the accused. The name of the accused has been given as Rahul Khanna.
Demo of fake papers revealed the secret
The CP said that after getting information from a local informer, the crime branch arrested Rahul from Bhopal. The complainant in the case is Santosh Baburao Gaikwad (33), a resident of Friends Colony. According to CP Kumar, Gaikwad had shown the demo of the racket in front of the police. He had transferred Rs 9,900/- from PhonePe to Khanna for providing royalty paper and transport permit for sand excavated from sand ghat located in Narsinghpur district of Madhya Pradesh. On Gaikwad’s demand, Khanna prepared the papers and sent them to Gaikwad on WhatsApp. Crime Branch officials are interrogating him to find out the names of the sand smugglers of Nagpur city.
Local sand mafia was in touch with Khanna
Elaborating on the modus operandi of the racket, the CP said that sand smugglers based in Nagpur were illegally digging sand from the district. They were using fake royalty paper made by Khanna to carry the stolen sand smoothly. The police came to know that the sand mafia of Wardha, Yavatmal, Bhandara and Chandrapur along with Nagpur district were also in contact with Khanna.