Satish Shetty murder: Land grab case reopened

The Bombay high court on Tuesday reopened the complaint of alleged land grab filed by slain RTI activist Satish Shetty in Pune against IRB CMD Virendra Mhaiskar. Shetty was stabbed to death near his house on January 13, 2010.

Justice ML Tahilyani set aside the closure report filed by the local police. The judge has sent the matter back to the metropolitan court, Pune, and asked the magistrate to reconsider Shetty’s complaint.

Mhaiskar said: “The magistrate didn’t find anything against me or the company then. We gave all the information to the CBI two years ago.”

The HC ruling was in response to an application filed by the CBI, seeking to reopen Shetty’s complaint, saying that it could be linked to the RTI activist’s murder.

On August 12, dna had reported about the CBI filing an application before the HC.

In October 2009, Shetty had filed a complaint with the Lonavla city police against 13 people, including Mhaiskar and a sub-registrar. The IRB constructed the Mumbai-Pune Expressway.

Shetty had alleged the land acquired by the state for the expressway, for which compensation was paid to the land owners, was re-sold by the original owners to Aryan Infrastructure and Investment — an IRB Group company.

Also, the name of MSRDC’s executive engineer, on whose behalf the government had acquired the land, was deleted from the land records.

Earlier, when HC sought an explanation, the state had said the revenue records were corrected and the case was closed as there was no loss to the public exchequer.