Interstate racket issuing e-transit passes to Maha sand mafia busted

Nagpur: City police crime branch has busted a Bhopal-based inter-state racket that had been issuing fake electronic transit passes (e-TP) to the sand mafia in Maharashtra, leading to loss of substantial royalty for the state government.
On Friday, a crime branch team picked up the mastermind Rahul Khanna from Bhopal. He is learnt to have been operating the racket for last several months.
Khanna, son of an influential politician from Bhopal, had issued a fake pass to a police decoy in Nagpur after walking into his trap.The decoy had asked Khanna over the phone to send him an e-transit pass from Bhopal for using it in Nagpur district.
Khanna, after receiving the payment, had sent him an e-pass from Narsinghpur to Nagpur, which can be used for nine hours. An offence against Khanna was first registered at Sadar police station following which the crime branch team was sent to Bhopal to round him up.
CP Amitesh Kumar, who spearheaded the operation with DCP crime Chinmay Pandit, said racketeers from Madhya Pradesh may have issued several such fake passes to sand mafias in Nagpur and other districts in Maharashtra. “In Nagpur, we had been investigating several cases of illegal sand carriage and other irregularities, including thefts. Now, all investigating officers have been instructed to find out whether the e-passes seized by them from the racketeers had any link with the present racket busted in Bhopal,” said Kumar.
He added the scam would lead to many other revelations about the modus operandi of the sand mafia in Nagpur district. “We have already invoked charges of criminal conspiracy in the case and many more heads are expected to roll now,” said the top cop.
DCP crime Pandit said the sand transporters were supposed to present their GPS-enabled vehicles at the sand ghats, get them weighed and then get the e-passes issued but the racketeers were procuring them from their own places.