BMC Engineer Denied Anticipatory Bail In Desilting Scam; Court Allows Time To Move High Court

Mumbai: The sessions court has on Thursday rejected anticipatory bail plea of BMC engineer Prashant Ramugade, booked in connection with Mithi river desilting scam. The court, however, has granted him protection of two weeks to move the high court for anticipatory bail. The detailed order of rejection is however not yet released and would be available later.

Meanwhile, in the detailed order granting anticipatory bail to Dipak Mohan and Kishore Menon, directors of Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd (MAPTROP), the sessions court has said that prima facie, there is no material showing role of the applicants as conspirators.

It is said that MAPTROP is the distributor of Stilt Pushing Pontoon Machine (SPPM) and Multipurpose Amphiblous Pontoon Machine (MAPM)/ Truxor. It is alleged that directors along with officers of BMC, contractors and coaccused Ketan Kadam, CEO of Virgo Specialties Pvt Ltd, conspired for inserting terms and conditions of the tenders being issued for desilting work of Mithi river in 2020. It is further alleged that the directors compelled contractors to purchase the machines or to approach M/s. Virgo Specialties Pvt Ltd to hire machines on excess rent and thereby caused wrongful loss to BMC.

It further observed that “MAPTROP is a distributor of the machines, which has a monopoly to sell machines in India. Merely because MAPTROP had appointed M/s Abhiraj as sub-distributor for Maharashtra, prima facie inference cannot be drawn that, MAPTROP had conspired with co-accused to introduce terms and conditions for use of the machines and compelling the contractors to use the machines.”