Octroi receipt racket: 3 more held

Octroi receipt racket: 3 more held

A Thane crime branch unit arrested three more persons for duping the municipal corporations by printing fake octroi receipts last week. The trio were part of a team who would approach private manufacturing companies as BMC officials and collect octroi from them. According to the unit, the team would contact manufacturing plants of various goods manufacturing companies across Bhiwandi, Nashik and other rural areas. When the companies wanted to send their finished products to Mumbai, which included cosmetics and electronic goods, the team would prepare fake octroi bills and send it to them. They would then deliver the goods in Mumbai and pocket the entire amount after fifteen days. “We had arrested seven people on November 4 in this case. Two more persons – Amit Sachdev, 32, and Prashant Lokegaokar, 36, were arrested on November 10 and a third, Manish Sajekar, 27, was arrested on November 16,” said Chandrakant Joshi, senior police inspector, crime branch unit 1. The octroi on cosmetic goods per kg is 7% and on electronic goods is 5% which was pocketed by the team. They mostly used ambulances to supply the goods as they are never checked at octroi nakas. “We recovered around 3,500 duplicate octroi receipts from the culprits. These receipts were of various municipal corporations such as the BMC, Thane, Bhiwandi, Ulhasnagar, Kalyan Dombivli, Navi Mumbai and Pune,” added Joshi The total loss suffered by the corporations is estimated to be Rs2.5crore till now and is likely to be more as the team has been operational for more than a year. The crime branch unit has sent the fake receipts to the Mumbai Mahanagar Palika octroi nodal officer who is investigating the case along with private companies.