Pune: The Junnar police in rural Pune filed a case against nine people, including three women, the then sub-registrar of Narayangaon, and an assistant director at the directorate of archives in Mumbai for conspiracy to usurp reserved forest land measuring eight hectares and 10 R in Kuran village between 2020 and 2024 using forged documents and falsifying entries. An R is equal to 100sqm or 0.0247 acres.
The complaint lodged by Junnar range forest officer (RFO) Pradip Chavan says the suspects, despite knowing that the land was a Schedule-I listed reserved forest, conspired with the then sub-registrar to enrol it without the requisite prior permission of the state regarding transactions of a restricted nature. They joined hands with an official in the directorate of archives to falsify the Bombay Gazette notification and claimed that the forged document was genuine to show that the forest department had no authority over the land, the complaint stated. Later, they misled the forest department into granting a no-objection certificate (NOC) and submitted all the forged documents and gazette notification with the Pune district collector to convert the land use purpose from Lien-II to Lien-I.
After getting the govt land determined as private ownership land, they got sale deeds registered with the sub-registrar, Narayangaon office, to establish private ownership of the land, the complaint stated. A Junnar police officer told TOI, "We are examining the contents of the complaint befor.
