C R Patil: tainted cop,bank defaulter,and now MP?

His story begins with his joining the Surat police in 1975 as a constable. He first courted trouble after a booze consignment was seized from a bootlegger in Palsana taluka in 1978 and his name came to figure in police records. The same year,another prohibition case was registered against him. Patil was arrested by the Surat Police Task Force and suspended for six years.

Patil resumed his job in 1984 and soon invited another suspension for trying to form a police union. Later,he allegedly came into contact with the then-rampant octroi evasion racket,with the backing of some textile mill owners. The Surat Municipal Corporation lodged a case of octroi evasion against him in 1995.

Meanwhile,politics beckoned,and Patil joined the BJP in 1990. In four short years,he became the party’s Surat district president.

But in 2002,the Crime Branch arrested Patil as chief defaulter in the Diamond Jubilee Cooperative Bank scam. Patil had taken a loan of more than Rs 54 crore and did not pay up,causing the bank to be suspended from the clearing house. Most of the lakhs of account-holders with the five branches of the bank were from middle- to low-income groups,and many are yet to get their money back.

Meanwhile,Patil was made chairman of the state-owned Gujarat Alkalies and Chemicals Ltd. But he was in trouble again after he took 48 acres of land at Sachin to construct 65,000 flats for textile labourers. He made a down payment of Rs 6 crore for possessing this Gujarat Industrial Development Corporation (GIDC) land on lease for 90 years on condition that the remaining would soon be paid. But he failed to do so and a court ordered the land to be sealed.

Crime Branch officials arrested Patil and his accomplices in 2002 and he had to remain in jail for 15 months,until he secured bail from the Gujarat High Court on the condition that he would repay the dues. He did not,and was re-arrested. He eventually coughed up the money: Rs 88 crore towards the bank loan and the rest for the GIDC land lease cost,with interest.

The last Assembly elections saw Patil getting conspicuously closer to Chief Minister Narendra Modi.

Patil claims that there is nothing surprising about this. “I now have a clean chit. I have cleared all my dues.” He also claims to be a victim. “I am innocent. Someone had framed me. My party high command would certainly have checked my record before giving me the ticket.”