PUNE: A junior official with the state police’s motor vehicle transport (MT) department here signed an agreement to transfer the sizeable Aundh Bodygate police land to the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) after receiving a mere thumbs-up sign on WhatsApp from a senior official in the department. The transfer has since been cancelled.The junior official signed the agreement around four or five months ago following which the PMC took up road-widening work at a bottleneck on the land around two months ago and even demolished the retaining wall of the MT department.A high-ranking official with the department told TOI, “The PMC prepared the agreement for the transfer of the land after holding several rounds of meeting with subordinate MT officials. The junior MT official who signed the agreement sent a draft document via WhatsApp to his senior for perusal. It was a long draft agreement. We do not know whether the senior official read the draft but, within minutes, he replied to the junior with a thumbs-up sign. The junior official took this as a nod to sign the agreement, which he did on behalf of the senior.”Senior officials from the state director general of police’s office in Mumbai rushed to Pune to stall the land transfer after noticing several shortcomings in the agreement.Inspector general of police Sunil Ramanand of the state criminal investigation department, who also heads the MT, told TOI, “The land transfer agreement now stands cancelled becauseit was not signed by the appropriate official.”The land is owned by three different entities of the state government — the Pune police, MT and Raj Bhavan. The other authorities were not consulted before the important land transfer agreement was signed. Besides, the agreement does not mention the cost or measurement of the land and what the PMC would give the police department in exchange for taking the land.

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