By IANS,
Nashik : A city court Tuesday granted police custody till Aug 25 to civic contractor Ramrao T. Patil in a Rs.10-crore cheating case, according to a police official.
The police arrested Patil Monday night after his application for anticipatory bail was rejected by the Nashik Sessions Court.
Patil was presented Tuesday afternoon before Chief Judicial Magistrate Vali Mohammed’s court, according to assistant police commissioner D.D. Kale.
Last month, Patil had lodged a complaint with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) alleging that Sarabjot alias Sweety Singh, son of former union minister Buta Singh, had demanded Rs.3 crore bribe in return for settling a case filed against him.
Sweety Singh, along with three other associates, was nabbed by the CBI July 31 and secured bail last week from a Mumbai court.
Patil is accused of cheating over 100 Dalit civic workers who worked under him. He had allegedly taken a loan of Rs.10 crore from a finance company in the name of these workers.
The workers learnt this when they received notices from the finance company ordering them to pay up and complained to the local police last month, Kale said.
They said Patil had cheated the workers by allegedly taking their signatures on blank papers for getting them jobs in the Nashik Municipal Corporation (NMC).
Patil is engaged as a contractor with the NMC and provides vehicles to collect garbage from all over the city.
The matter of cheating the Dalit workers came under the purview of the National Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes Commission, headed by Buta Singh who had ordered the police to book Patil under the SC/SC Atrocities Act.