AEC chief Bhanupratap Barge said: “Amolik has confessed to having prepared three POAs in the name of 377 farmers in 2000 and notarised the documents in his own name and even signed the documents as a notary. This he did on March 29, 2000, when he was not a notary. He became a notary in 2002.”

Barge said even the signatures of the farmers and witnesses are suspected to be fake. “Some signatures have been forged in the name of one advocate named Purandhare. We are investigating if a person named Purandhare exists at all. The documents also bear signatures in the names of 35 dead farmers all notarised by Amolik. We have taken a serious note of these glaring irregularities and will go to their root,” Barge added.

Amolik has been booked under sections 420, 467, 471, 468 and 34 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The police are verifying the genuineness of the stamp paper used for the transactions as they have found it to have been issued by stamp vendor V.R. Jamkol, currently lodged in Yerawada Central Jail in connection with the multi-crore Telgi fake stamp paper case. “This angle is being probed but there is no evidence to confirm the suspicion of a connection between the Manjari land scam and the Telgi case,” said Barge.

Meanwhile, in a related development late on Wednesday evening, seven officials from the Sub Registrar offices at Haveli IV (with jurisdiction over Hadapsar), Haveli 19 (jurisdiction Pashan), and Haveli 12 (jurisdiction Kondhwa), were granted interim bail by Additional Sessions Judge S.V. Kale here.

The seven include three sub registrars Sadashiv Jadhav (51), Gangadhar Pupale (52) and Rajendra Motirule (41). The others were senior clerks Anil Gunjal (42 ) and Anil Jagtap (37) and junior clerks Manjusha Pendse (35) and Hanumanta Chavan (40). All of them have been granted interim bail till November 27 on grounds that they were government officials and will not leave the city.

The officials had approached the court fearing arrest by the police after a couple of inquiries about their involvement in the landscam by the AEC. The police apparently have been acting tough with the officials at the sub registrar offices. AEC chief Barge said: “We will fix responsibility on officials involved in the land scam”.