AURANGABAD, Aug 12: Two days after they were released from police custody, Suwalal Chalani (65) and his son Sandeep (30), two main accused in the Jain muni murder case, were thrown back in the slammer - this time on charges of cheating and forgery.Both have been remanded to magisterial custody following a complaint lodged with the police by five farmers, who have accused the Chalanis of conniving with a tractor dealer to diddle them out of at least Rs 10 lakh.Besides breathing fresh life into the investigations into the cheating case - the first complaint was lodged in December 1997 - the arrest of the father-son duo has also given the probe into the Jain muni murder case a boost. The police plea for further custody of the five main accused was recently turned down by the chief judicial magistrate, who remanded them to magisterial custody.However, following the complaint in the cheating case, the Chalanis were remanded to police custody between August 8 and 10, facilitating interrogation into themurder of Jain Muni Sampat Maharaj. They are, however, currently back in magisterial custody.According to the complaint lodged by the farmers between December 1997 and August 1998, the Chalanis had approached Shriram Nivas Kachardas Bhandari, owner of Nath Auto, Aurangabad, who was at the time an authorised dealer for Mahindra and Mahindra Tractors. The five farmers gave Bhandari five bank drafts, each worth over Rs 2 lakh, as advance payment for some tractors they wanted to purchase.Though Bhandari encashed the drafts drawn in favour of his agency, he refused to deliver the tractors on various pretexts. Police investigations reveal that Bhandari then approached Suwalal Chalani, who happens to be one of the biggest vehicle brokers in the region apart from being a trustee of the Guruganesh Ashram, to buy tractors from another agency, the Wason agency based in Ahmednagar, in the name of the five farmers.Chalani bought the tractors, which were given temporary clearance by the Road Transport Office,Ahmednagar, in the name of the five farmers. However, when the vehicles arrived in Aurangabad, Chalani, in whose possession they were, got them registered in the name of five others parties to whom he later sold them. Three of the trucks were sold to a leading construction company - Muley Brothers - here, police said.Investigations also reveal that Chalani had tampered with the tractor chassis numbers.The Chalanis have now been booked under Sections 420, 467, 468 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code.
