Nagpur: Three members of an interstate gang allegedly involved in defrauding farmers of Rs73 crore by fraudulently obtaining agricultural loans from a nationalised bank have been arrested by rural police.The three allegedly used forged documents and fake warehouse receipts to obtain the loan, cops said. Eighteen cases have been registered in connection with the fraud so far. The accused allegedly targeted poor and illiterate farmers in Mouda and Ramtek, obtained loans worth crores in their names and diverted the money to companies floated using fake identities.The arrested accused have been identified as Madan Gopal Mallikarjun Patil (26), a resident of Bengaluru, Priyaranjan Ashok Kumar Chaudhary alias Gaurav Mishra alias Gaurav Jaiswal (42), and Rahul alias Sandeep Satish Dubey (37). Chaudhary and Mishra hail from Jabalpur.Patil was arrested in Bengaluru on Nov 1, while the other two were apprehended from Nakshatra Nagar in Jabalpur on Nov 3.According to police, the gang members allegedly approached farmers with the promise of providing Rs10,000 annually as govt compensation for crop damage. They persuaded them to open bank accounts. Later, the three collected farmers’ Aadhaar cards, PAN cards and land records.The farmers were then made to sign documents in English, without understanding their contents, which were allegedly used to secure agricultural loans worth lakhs of rupees. Investigation revealed that loans amounting to Rs54 crore were obtained from a bank’s Mouda branch and Rs19 crore from its Ramtek branch.The accused allegedly procured fake warehouse licences from Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority (WDRA), Delhi, and used forged electronic Negotiable Warehouse Receipts (eNWR) to obtain loans under the Produce Marketing Loan scheme.
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