Mumbai road scam: Five engineers held

Five site engineers of private firms were today arrested in connection with the Rs 350 crore Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) road scam, taking the total number of people in police custody so far to 19.
Until yesterday, police had arrested 14 people, including ten auditors of private firms, four contractors and site engineers, in connection with the case.
Those arrested today are Amar Kamble (32) and Vel Maharajan Nadar (28), both of Relcon Infraprojects ltd, Pravin Panchal (21) of Relcon-R K Madhani Co. (JV), Dilip Rathod (36) of RPS-K R Construction (JV) and Viraj Patil (36) of Mahavir Roads & Infra.

Last year, Mumbai Mayor Snehal Ambekar had written to BMC chief Ajoy Mehta complaining about the poor quality of newly-constructed roads in the city, police had said.
According to police, a case was registered in this regard at Azad Maidan police station on April 27, after the BMC's internal inquiry revealed that more than two dozen roads in the city were of poor quality.
A Special Investigating Team (SIT) was formed under the leadership of Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP,Colaba Division) Rajendra Chavan to probe the case.
The ten auditors, arrested last week, were employees of two private engineering audit firms, who were appointed by the BMC to inspect the road works by contractors.

The investigators had found that these ten accused were hand in glove with the contractors concerned in the roads scam.