Ghaziabad: 72-year-old resorts to cheating, forgery to sell vacant land near Metro station; held

The police on Thursday arrested a 72-year-old man for allegedly forging ownership documents for a vacant plot near the Arthala Metro station in Sahibabad and pocketing the token money from several people after promising to sell the land to them, senior police officers said.

Police identified the suspect as Rajkumar Garg, who hails from Muzaffarnagar and resides in Meerut. They said Garg came to know that a 33-acre plot lying vacant near the Arthala Metro station and later found out that the land was owned by a man named Rajkumar Agarwal.

“Garg prepared fake identification documents in the name of Rajkumar Agarwal and his father. Later, he posed as the owner of the land, which is currently valued at about ₹1,000 crore,” said Nimish Patil, deputy commissioner of police, trans-Hindon.

Police said the suspect lured several prospective buyers to purchase the land and pocketed token money from them on the basis of forged land documents and ID papers.

“The suspect usurped about ₹1.5 crore from five different people in this manner and investigation is underway to ascertain whether more people fell for his ploy and lost money. He was booked initially in an FIR in 2020 and in 2024 we slapped him with Gangsters Act,” Patil said.

The police said that the suspect has seven cases registered against him at Sahibabad police station. These include cases in connection with rioting, cheating, forgery and also under the Gangsters Act.