Goa: Clerk, ex-Panchayat member chargesheeted for forgery

Porvorim police have filed a chargesheet against a clerk and a former member of the Salvador-do-Mundo Panchayat for forgery in connection with regularising an illegal structure in the village.
The chargesheet was filed against Ritesh Gadkar, the clerk and Bhagwant Ladu Naik, former member of the Panchayat, under sections 167 and 468, r/w section 34 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, for forging a public document by public servants with intent to cheat a person of his ancestral land, said police sub-inspector Videsh Shirodkar.
The chargesheet was filed in the court of the Judicial Magistrate First Class at Mapusa last week, he told PTI.

If convicted, the accused could face seven years rigorous imprisonment besides penalty.
According to police, the duo altered an entry in the inward register of the Panchayat to regularise an illegal house built by Naik's relative Mahadev Shirodkar on a plot, measuring 2000 sq metres, owned by a villager and trying to grab the land.
The chargesheet mentions that Naik allegedly induced Gadkar to do the forgery to ensure that the house constructed illegally by Shirodkar got regularised by the Directorate of Panchayts.
Police had seized the register and sent it to Hyderabad in 2011 as Goa has no examiner of public documents, after arresting Gadkar and Naik in this connection.

"Experts at the Hyderabad lab has confirmed in their report to us that there have been erasures and overwriting made in the handwriting of Ritesh Gadkar," said Shirodkar.