Mumbai: The city’s economic offences wing (EOW) on Tuesday registered an FIR against 13 persons, including five contractors, three middlemen, directors of various companies, and three BMC current and former employees, for allegedly causing wrongful loss of Rs 65.54 crore to the BMC in the alleged Mithi River desilting scam. The EOW had constituted an SIT on March 20 last year to probe the alleged desilting scam. An FIR for cheating, breach of trust, forgery, and criminal conspiracy was registered at the Azad Maidan police station on Tuesday, and the EOW took over the probe. Multiple EOW teams on Tuesday raided seven premises belonging to the accused. “We found that the documents of nine places (dumping ground) and MoUs submitted by the accused to the BMC, which were necessary to get the contract of desiltin, were fake. Some had different person’s signature, while some documents didn’t have contractors’ signatures. In one case, landowner said he did not sign any such MoU. The accused submitted the bills and got them passed. There was no desilting material, and it is clear there was no desilting,” said DCP Sangramsinh Nishandar.“An MoU was prepared in the name of a person who died long ago,” said an EOW officer.As per the FIR lodged by EOW inspector Bilal Ahmed Shaikh, the alleged scam took place between February 1, 2013, and December 30, 2023. Those named as accused in the FIR include Prashant Ramugude, BMC’s assistant engineer who is a designated officer for Mithi River; Ganesh Bondre and Taye Shette, both retired BMC executive engineers; Jay Joshi, a director in Virgo Specialties Pvt Ltd; Deepak Mohan and Kishore Menon, both directors of Matprop Technical Services Pvt Ltd; Ketan Kadam of Vodar India LLP; and Bhupendra Purohit of the Tridev company, among others. A team supervised by joint commissioner Nishith Mishra, led by Nishandar and inspector Santosh Tore is probing the case.An EOW officer said Matprop gave a proposal to BMC to purchase a silt pusher machine and a multipurpose amphibious pontoon machine. However, the BMC’s concerned officials did not mention it in the note sheet and instead asked the contractors to take it on rent. While the price of the machinery was Rs 3.09 crore, the company cited Rs 8 crore rent for two years. After negotiation, it was brought down to Rs 4 crore.