Doctor plays detective

Dr Malcolm Pestonjee, chairman of the Vasai Medical Foundation Trust which reportedly operates two hospitals in that district north of Bombay, was looking for a plot on which to construct a new 250-bed charity hospital. In November 2007 one Ramkrishna Verma, who runs Tungareshwar Academy which has six schools in Vasai, reportedly approached Pestonjee offering him 10,000 sq ft of land which the doctor agreed to purchase for Rs 15 lakh. He allegedly gave Verma a token amount of three lakhs and began work on the project, reports Mumbai Mirror (MM), dated August 8, 2008.

However, every time Pestonjee asked for the land documents for registration, Verma would fob him off with flimsy excuses, MM reveals. "I then decided to check with the Land Registration office in Vasai and was shocked to learn that the plot actually belonged to the government. Equally shocking was the fact that Verma had been running his institute on the government land for the past 19 years,” Pestonjee informed MM. In December 2007 Pestonjee reportedly wrote to the collector applying for regularization of the plot after paying penalties. "The collector agreed and I have already paid the fine and was also penalized for felling some trees since the land belonged to the government,” Pestonjee revealed.

The matter did not end there. In July 2008 the doctor claimed he was threatened by one Jayesh Mehta who alleged that Pestonjee had felled 250 trees on the plot. Mehta demanded Rs 25 lakh as "fees” for the act or else he said he would complain to Mantralaya, administrative headquarters of the Maharashtra government. The doctor, who feels that Mehta was under the impression that he was a rich man, was called to a hotel "where Mehta (allegedly) brandished a revolver and said he was acting on supari (contract killing) given by Verma for five lakh rupees. I pleaded with Mehta for 10 days’ time to arrange the money,” he informed MM.

Unknown to Mehta, Pestonjee recorded the conversation on his mobile and handed the same to Senior Police Inspector Pandarinath Mandre of the Manickpur police who swung into action. As per the MM report, both Verma and Mehta have been remanded to custody.