MUMBAI: A special court has acquitted a builder from the city in a 44-year-old case for allegedly manipulating land measurement records to secure a higher Floor Space Index (FSI). The decision was made due to insufficient evidence.
Judge Shayana Patil, who presides over cases under the Prevention of Corruption (PC) Act, determined that the prosecution had not substantiated any charges against Chaitanya Laxmidas Vora, the only remaining defendant in this trial.
The case against his co-defendants, maintenance surveyor Kedu Pandurang Bhalerao and builder Laxmidas Hargovinddas Vora, was dismissed after their deaths in 2024.
Three other individuals named in the initial FIR have also passed away during the investigation.
The alleged malpractice occurred between February 1980 and December 1982, but the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) filed the FIR only on October 3, 1992, and the chargesheet was lodged 24 years later on May 7, 2016.
Prosecutors claimed that Bhalerao, a public servant, colluded with builders and an architect to falsely inflate the area of a property in Vile Parle from 1,179.6 square meters to 1,249.9 square meters, orchestrating a 5.9 percent increase in the plot’s area to gain a higher FSI and benefits.
The trial began this year, but the prosecution managed to examine only three witnesses. Many others were either unreachable or deceased by that point.
Notably, the original complainant, former police inspector Ramkrishna Gosavi, could not provide testimony as he has been suffering from dementia since 2001.
The judge emphasized that as Vora is a builder and not a public servant, the charges of criminal misconduct under the PC Act did not apply to him.
The court further highlighted that the prosecution did not present original revenue records or evidence that any documents were tampered with to alter the plot’s area.
