Navi Mumbai: In the case of the fake heirship certificate at the Panvel court, the police have now arrested a property agent following the arrest of court employees and lawyers. The arrested agent has been identified as Sunil Chetanarayan Upadhyay (45).

About The Case

According to police, investigations revealed that he had illegally obtained the heir certificate by paying additional money to lawyers Amar Patwardhan and Yogesh Kelkar, who were previously arrested. So far, the police have arrested five lawyers and two court employees in this case. Sunil Upadhyay is the eighth accused, and the court has remanded him to police custody until February 24.

“Prima facie we have found that the forged heirship certificate was obtained through Advocate Patwardhan and Advocate Kelkar who procured it through junior clerk Deepak Phad and handed it over to property agent Upadhyay,” a police officer privy to the investigations said, adding that Upadhyay had initially tried to conceal the names of the advocates involved by naming a deceased lawyer.

However, after the arrest and interrogation of Patwardhan and Kelkar, Upadhyay’s involvement was revealed.

The police also found that Upadhyay had paid extra money to Patwardhan and Kelkar to obtain the fake heirship certificate.  After confirming his involvement, the Special Investigation Team (SIT) Chief Inspector Sachin Pardeshi and his team arrested Upadhyay on Monday.

Kamala Devi Gupta, a resident of Thane, needed to submit an heir certificate for a CIDCO plot allocation under the 12.5% scheme. According to police, she approached property agent Sunil Upadhyay for assistance in obtaining the certificate. Upadhyay then paid additional money to advocates Patwardhan and Kelkar to create a fake heir certificate. These lawyers, in turn, used junior clerk Deepak Phad at the Panvel court to generate a fraudulent heir certificate, which was then handed over to Upadhyay.

However, when CIDCO officials checked the certificate online, it was not found in their system, leading them to reject it. Suspicious of foul play, Kamala Devi Gupta filed a complaint at the Panvel court. Upon investigation, it was revealed that the heir certificate was forged, with fake seals and bogus signatures of judges and assistant superintendents.