Policce grill two more officials in ‘Adarsh’ case

Two officials of the urban development department (UDD) were summoned by the Mumbai police crime branch to record their statements in connection with the pages that have gone missing in a file pertaining to the Adarsh Housing Society.

Assistant town planner Ashok Pati and UDD clerk Vidya Dhabolkar were summoned to the Crawford Market police station on Sunday. They were among the employees who had access to the UD office on the fourth floor of Mantralaya at Nariman Point.

''Statements of both the officials were recorded. Earlier, when an RTI application was filed seeking the documents, Patil had replied stating that the file was missing. Subsequently, the department had started searching for the file. Dhabolkar found the file, but then the notings on the file were missing,'' said a crime branch official.

The two UD employees, who were called to the crime branch Unit I office, were recording their statements till late Tuesday evening. "As of now, we are just recording their statements in keeping with the procedure. This is just the beginning as we will summon and record the statements of several other employees of the department, including a few senior officials, as the investigation progresses,'' said an official.

The missing papers dealt with the change in road width, change from ''road'' to ''residential purposes'', creating room for Adarsh. The notings on the missing pages were made around 2000-2003 during the tenure of Ramanand Tiwari as principal secretary and P V Deshmukh as deputy secretary, reports said.

UD officials say the notings pertain to reduction of the width of Captain Prakash Pethe Marg from 60.97 m to 18.40 m.