Did contractor forge papers to get Shirdi airport work?

The contract to upgrade the Shirdi airport had been awarded in July 2017

The Mumbai police have booked two persons, including the director of a Hyderabad-based construction company, for allegedly submitting forged bank guarantees for Rs 1.84 crore to acquire a project tied to the Shirdi airport. The case against Bhaskar Rammohanrao Adabala, director of Vasishta Projects, and Bobby Komula came on a complaint by the Maharashtra Airport Development Company (MADC) that awarded a contract to the company in July 2017.

As part of the contract, Vasistha was to extend the existing runway and apron area to facilitate the landing of bigger aircraft apart from constructing the runway-end safety area and isolation bay at the pilgrim town. As per the conditions, Vasistha Projects presented security deposits worth Rs 87.73 lakh and Rs 3.23 crore through three bank guarantees. The additional security deposits had bank securities validity ranging from April 2020, January 2021 and March 2021.

A flight from Tirupati lands at Shirdi Airport. Pic by Deepak Kapoor on Twitter

When the company could not complete the work even after multiple extensions, MADC revoked the contract in September 2020 and wrote to Bank of Baroda, Banjara Hill branch, Hyderabad, for encashing Vasishtha's security deposits.

While MADC could encash a security deposit worth Rs 87.73 lakh, the deposit of Rs 1.4 crore couldn't be encashed as it had already lapsed. To its shock, the airport development body was told that two bank guarantees of Rs 1 crore and Rs 84.23 lakh were forged.

The work was to extend the runway to facilitate landing of bigger planes near the pilgrim town. File pic

"While presenting the guarantees, the two disputed deposits were shown to be having validity up to January 2021 and March 2021. But in reality, their validity was up to June 2018 and March 2019 respectively. During correspondence, the bank replied to MADC that it had not extended their validity hence they could no longer be encashed," said a source at MADC.

The Cuffe Parade police on April 26 registered an FIR against the director and another official of Vasishta Projects for forgery and cheating. "The offence is technical and needs deep investigation. We will call the accused for the interrogation and subsequently further action will be taken," said Sandesh Revale, senior inspector, Cuffe Parade police station.

mid-day tried to reach out to Deepak Kapoor, vice chairman and managing director of MADC, but he remained unavailable.

Rs 87.7L
Amount MADC has got from the bank guarantees so far