City survey superintendent arrested in bogus property cards racket

Surat: The CID (Crime) on Saturday arrested Anant Patel, a key accused in a land grab racket involving 486 allegedly bogus property cards, from Pune.

Patel, a Class II city survey superintendent, had been absconding since January 2025 when an FIR was registered by CID (Crime), Surat.

He was produced before a local Pune court for transit remand and is expected to be presented before a Surat court on Sunday.

Patel is accused of colluding with others to usurp prime land near the Surat airport by generating fake property documents. The accused include his senior, Class I city survey superintendent Kana Gamit, a data entry operator in the survey office, and promoters of Samruddhi Corporation. They have been booked under IPC sections for cheating, forgery, and criminal conspiracy. Several other accused remain at large.

The complaint was filed by Azad Ramoliya, a landowner, who alleged that bogus property cards were created to seize land parcels in Dumas, Gavier, and Vanta villages near the city. These areas—strategically located between Surat and Dumas Beach along the Tapi river—currently host some of the highest-value undeveloped land in the region.

According to the FIR, Samruddhi Corporation—allegedly owned by top realtors in Surat—was involved in illegally developing plotting schemes on the seized land. Some plots, transferred fraudulently using forged documents, changed hands multiple times. Ramoliya claimed that government officials and developers colluded to prepare 135 fake property cards for his six plots in Dumas and one in Vanta, and another 351 bogus entries for other plots between 2017 and 2022.

He alleged that despite filing several complaints with authorities, including the district collector, no action was taken for years. He also stated that names of farmers were falsely entered in the 7/12 extracts and the plots were sold as part of a farmhouse scheme called ‘Silent Zone'.