Ghatkopar hoarding case turns into corruption probe: PCA added as cops trace payments linked to suspended IPS officer

PCA sections added as SIT tracks Rs 82 lakh flow from hoarding firm to associates linked to suspended IPS officer Quaiser Khalid.

The 2024 Ghatkopar hoarding collapse, a tragedy that killed 17 people, has entered a new phase. What began as a case of an illegal billboard crashing during a storm is now officially a corruption investigation.

Mumbai Police have added sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act (PCA) to the case, signalling that the probe is no longer just about structural violations but alleged financial irregularities behind the permissions that allowed the oversized hoarding to come up in the first place.

Why PCA was added now

A senior official told PTI that the police Special Investigation Team (SIT) had written to the Maharashtra government months ago, flagging possible corruption that needed Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) scrutiny.

Instead of creating duplicate investigations, the state told the police to add PCA sections directly, since the witnesses and suspected accused were common to both tracks.

The SIT has now formally done so.

Follow the money: Rs 82 lakh trail raises red flags

According to the PTI report, investigators found that Ego Media Pvt Ltd, the outdoor advertising firm that erected the hoarding, had made Rs 82 lakh worth of payments into bank accounts of individuals linked to Arshad Khan, described as a business associate of the wife of suspended IPS officer Quaiser Khalid.

Khalid was Mumbai’s Railway Police Commissioner at the time of the transactions.

“There were 22 transactions, many of them during Khalid’s tenure,” the official told PTI.

Khalid has already been questioned. In his statement, he told investigators he knew Arshad Khan.

The IPS officer at the centre of scrutiny

Khalid was suspended earlier by the Maharashtra government for alleged administrative lapses and irregularities in sanctioning the Ghatkopar hoarding without clearance from the Director General of Police’s office.

The collapse on May 13 last year, which crushed vehicles at a petrol pump in Chhedanagar, sparked outrage over Mumbai’s unregulated hoarding industry and triggered calls for a clean-up of the permission process.

The PCA addition now elevates the case from a regulatory failure to a potential corruption-linked permissions chain.

A 3,200-page chargesheet and a parallel committee review

Police had already filed a 3,200-page chargesheet last year detailing the illegalities and lapses. Separately, the state set up a high-level committee headed by retired Justice Dilip Bhosale to relook at hoarding rules.

The committee’s recommendations, accepted in September, include:

a 40x40 feet cap on billboard size
a ban on hoardings on terraces and compound walls

If implemented effectively, these norms could reshape Mumbai’s outdoor advertising landscape, long criticised for being loosely regulated.