BENGALURU: Four engineers of the Bengaluru Development Authority, including an Assistant Engineer (AE) who was to retire this month, were arrested by the Seshadripuram police on Tuesday night for malpractices in the allotment of sites. They allegedly connived with agents as well as BDA’s Revenue Department to create false documents to allot sites, said highly-placed BDA sources. Ten more BDA employees are likely to be arrested in the case soon, the sources added.
All the arrested were working at the BDA North office at R T Nagar when they created false Correct Dimension (CD) reports. They are three AEs -- M S Shankar Murthy (who was transferred to BBMP two months ago), K N Ravikumar and Shabir Ahmed, and D Sriram, an Assistant Executive Engineer. Ahmed was to retire by February-end.
The CD report gives all details on the dimension of the site, its location and surroundings and is a crucial document in site allotment, an official said. The arrested officials created fake CDs for sites measuring 20x30 sqft and 20x40 sqft. Sriram and Ahmed have each created 14 such reports, while Murthy seven and Ravikumar five.
BDA sites were allotted in HBR Layout
The sites allotted were in a prime locations, like HBR Layout First Block and Third Block. “This is part of an ongoing crackdown on corruption within BDA and is a continuation of the Shive Gowda case in the past involving fake CD reports. The four were called by Seshadripuram police for interrogation at 4 pm on Tuesday and were later arrested after their involvement became clear,” said a top police officer.
BDA Deputy Secretary Shive Gowda was running a parallel office, along with a broker, on Cunningham Road to allot BDA sites. The office was raided on December 6, 2020 in which four BDA staffers were arrested.