Mumbai: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police has made significant revelations in the ongoing investigation into the ₹65 crore scam related to the Mithi River cleaning project. According to sources, the alleged mastermind behind the scam is BMC engineer Prashant Ramugade, who reportedly had an indirect partnership in contractor Bhupendra Purohit’s company, Group One Solutions, using his close associate Sarika Kamdar as a front.

The investigation revealed that Purohit had named his wife Kiran as a partner in the firm, while Ramugade did the same with Kamdar. However, behind the scenes, it was Ramugade and Purohit who were running the operations. Group One Solutions had secured the contract for maintaining machinery used in cleaning the Mithi River — a contract allegedly awarded by Ramugade himself to benefit both parties financially through BMC payouts.

EOW sources disclosed that instead of desilting the river, the contractors were using dump trucks to dispose of debris from private builders. The trucks would first be filled with construction waste, and a thin layer of sludge would be added on top to camouflage the fraud. Shockingly, officials believe that no actual desilting work was carried out, despite the submission of fake bills to the BMC to claim large sums of money.

The probe has further revealed that Ramugade consistently awarded BMC contracts to four companies linked to Purohit — Tridev, Tanisha, MB Brothers, and DB. Tender conditions were allegedly tailored to ensure only Purohit’s companies would qualify.

In February 2021, BMC issued four tenders for Mithi River cleaning, which required at least eight desilting machines. However, not a single machine was deployed until June 2021. Again in February 2022, six tenders were floated that required 12 machines — yet none were used. Despite this, payments were continually made to the accused companies. In 2022–23, a fresh round of tenders was issued, but even then, machinery remained unused.

EOW’s findings also suggest that a company named MatProp deliberately sold machinery to Purohit’s firm to help it meet tender eligibility requirements, thereby manipulating the contract allocation process. The investigation into this high-profile scam is ongoing.