Pune, June 17: Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) sleuths on Tuesday arrested former additional commissioner of Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) Ashok
Vishwanath Deshpande of Baner road for his alleged involvement in illegally sanctioning excess transfer of development rights (TDR) of land acquired by the civic body.
Deshpande will be produced in the ACB court on Wednesday.
The ACB had on Monday arrested additional commissioner of PMC Vivek Kharwadkar of Sinhgad road, former assistant engineer Arun Mahadev Joshi of Rajendranagar and builder Shekhar Chandrakant Savkar of Shivajinagar in the same case.
They were, on Tuesday, granted interim bail for a day. The suspects were released on a personal bond of Rs 15,000 each with one surety of the like amount. The judge directed the trio to appear before the court on Wednesday when their bail applications will come up for final hearing. (see Page 2)
Corporator Nitin Jagtap had lodged a complaint in this regard with the Deccan Gymkhana police station in 2005.
Speaking to TOI, superintendent of police (ACB) Vishwas Pandhare said, “For the last two days, we had been looking for Deshpande, but he was out of town. Following a tip-of on Tuesday that he was coming to the Shivajinagar court, we laid a trap and detained him around 4 pm.”
Jagtap has stated in his complaint that Deshpande, who was additional commissioner of the PMC and chairman of the TDR committee, had illegally sanctioned TDR for 859 square metres of land in Kasba Peth.
Pandhare said the land near the Mutha river, which comes under the green belt, was acquired by the PMC for a drainage plant and a 100- ft-wide road.
He said that as per the development control rules, only four per cent TDR could have been sanctioned for the land as it was in the green belt. However, Deshpande, Kharwadkar and Joshi allegedly sanctioned 200 per cent TDR, which is twice the area of the land.