MUMBAI, July 15 -- After he was arrested last year for selling government land in Vasai to builders using forged documents, former corporator Sitaram Gupta has been nabbed in a similar fraud. A June 27 case registered by the Naigaon police against Gupta for selling 6,000 square metres of land owned by the Christian community to construct an illegal building led to his arrest yesterday. According to Sanjay Hazare, senior police inspector of Naigaon police station, the two builders who had bought the land from Gupta and were constructing the illegal buildings, got into a dispute regarding money, after which they approached the police. The police found that the property was owned by the Citizen Co-operative Housing Society, a cooperative complex where members of the Christian community lived. However the documents presented by the builders stated that Satish Tiwari and Sanjay Sharma had bought the land from the original owner, Leslie John Hector Lobo, in 2024 and had got it registered in their names. Hazare said that on further investigation, the police found that the documents were forged by Gupta and a certain Micheal Moses by getting a person to impersonate Lobo. Using a forged Aadhar card and other ID documents of Lobo, they prepared the document for "purchasing" the land from Citizen Co-operative Housing Society. This Society came up years ago when Ignatius Mines Francis, Frederick D'Souza, and Leslie John Hector Lobo, then directors of Citizen Bank, decided to construct a residential society for Christians. The latter pooled in the funds required to purchase 60 acres of land in Naigaon East in 1994-95, on which they constructed 36 buildings. The police contacted the Society members and found that Ignatius Mines Francis died in 1998. Frederick D'Souza is 85 years old and currently lives in Neral, while Leslie John Hector Lobo is 90 years old and resides in Dadar. Due to his advanced age and frequent ill health, he faces difficulties in carrying out the work of the Society and has therefore given power of attorney to 71-year-old Brian Dominic Menezes, who filed the police complaint. Menezes told HT that there were already 36 buildings on the land owned by the society. "However there is a 6,000-square-meter plot on it which cannot be developed, as it is near the mangroves," he said. "The scamsters sold this to the two builders, who constructed illegal chawls on it." Based on the complaint, on June 27, the police registered an FIR against Gupta, Mosses, Tiwari and Sharma. "We arrested Moses on Sunday," said Hazare. "Since Gupta has already been arrested by the Economic Offences Wing last year, we will ask for his custody to investigate this case."...