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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...

Rs 1,18,046,99,18,073 !! Transaction of just one Dabba Trade accused

By Dheeraj Fartode 

Rs 1,18,046,99,18,073... Yes-- One lakh eighteen thousand fourty six crore ninety nine lakh-- This is the extent of mind-boggling transaction by just one Dabba Trader unearthed by sleuths during their investigations. This shocking figure has been officially cited in an affidavit by the Economic Offences Wing (EoW) which stumbled upon this unbelievable figure after decoding the trading transactions of one Kanhaiya alias Kanni Thawrani. 
The EoW investigation into multi-crore ‘Dabba’ trading scam has also revealed new sensational information disclosing huge turnover, unimaginable profit, hint about sources of black money and hawala racket, and ultimately huge loss to state exchequer. “Accused Kanni Thawrani has done a business of whopping Rs 1.18 lakh crore in last four years. And, another accused - Sachin Agrawal -- had done business of Rs 5,180 crore in only four months,” the investigating machinery stated in affidavit filed at Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court. The figures have raised eyebrows of senior officers as no officer ever expected these kind of astronomical sums. Now, the investigating machinery has pegged the total business volume of Dabba Trading network during last four years at whopping Rs 12 lakh crore. Now,  all eyes are pointed towards business volume of kingpin Ravi Agrawal. 
However, experts have pointed out that these are not actual transactions but only notional dealings without involving actual cash as the Dabba Traders used to settle position every Saturday and Sunday and difference between speculative investment and actual profit or loss booked used to change hand slyly. Nonetheless, these figures depict a very disturbing picture about existence of a parallel and illegal stock exchange and audacious trading done by speculators without any fear of law. 
A senior police officer informed The Hitavada that the information came to fore after analysing computers seized from the business shops of the Dabba traders. Since January 2012 to May 2016, Kanni Thawrani, (near TVS showroom, first floor, Telephone Exchange square, Lakadganj) has done business of Rs 1,18,046,99,18,073 and evaded taxes of Rs 20 crore. Similarly, total business volume of Sachin Agrawal, (near Nagpur Nagarik Bank, Dr Ambedkar Square, Lakadganj) is Rs 5,180 between January and May 2016, that is just five months. He duped the state exchequer to the tune of Rs one crore. Earlier data of his business was not available. A police officer said that Agrawal used to destroy entire data every year. 
Ravi Agrawal had used sophisticated softwares to hide trading softwares from police. The police had raided L7 group’s Nagpur and Mumbai house and recovered important evidence which were sent to forensic science lab (FSL). After receiving copy of the hard disks, the cops would analyze his business volume.
A senior police officer informed that Ravi Agrawal had also stored data of ‘Dabba’ trading in icloud, which is a cloud storage and cloud computing service from tech giant Apple. This was the difficult task for the EoW Nagpur as Apple had earlier refused to share data with USA’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2015 San Bernardino terrorist attack citing privacy of customers. “Many important data of trading of Ravi Agrawal is still out of reach due to the sophisticated softwares,” the officer said. 

Affidavit of business volume of 
eight accused in two weeks 

The accused whose audit of Dabba trading in last phase are identified as Pritesh Sureshkumar Lakhotia (37), a resident of Indu Narayan Apartment, Shankar Nagar and proprietor of Atharva Securities, Gandhibagh; Gopi Malu, proprietor of JK Investment, at basement of Jagat chambers, Dr Ambedkar Square, Lakadganj; Abhishek Bajaj, Honey apartment, first floor, near Somani trading corporation, Dr Ambedkar Square, Lakadganj; Dinesh Gokhlani, office at Telephone Exchange square (now dead); Govind Bhanwarlal Sarda (42), a resident of Canal Road, Ramdaspeth; Pritesh Sureshkumar Lakhotia (37), a resident of 201, Shankar Nagar; Vijay Chandulal Goklani (34), a resident of Quetta colony. Sources informed that the police would file an affidavit about trading volume of these accused within two weeks. 

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