She once served passengers thousands of feet above the ground as an Air India air hostess. Then came a dramatic career switch. Neha Pachisia cracked the Madhya Pradesh Public Service Commission examination, joined the state police as a Deputy Superintendent of Police and rose to become City Superintendent of Police (CSP) in Katni.
Katni Superintendent of Police Neha Pachisia has been suspended after charges of forcing a family to sell their land for one-fourth the value
Chief Minister Mohan Yadav on Friday directed Pachisia’s immediate suspension, two days after an FIR was registered against the serving officer and two private individuals at Katni’s Kuthla police station. The allegations have triggered action at the highest level of the Madhya Pradesh government. The officer will remain attached to the Police Headquarters in Bhopal during her suspension, while the Chief Minister has ordered a fair investigation and stringent action against anyone found responsible. What turns an allegedly undervalued land deal into a far more serious case is the charge that police authority itself may have been used to make the transaction happen. Lodhi was in jail and facing investigation in a criminal case. Investigators are now examining allegations that the vulnerability of his family was exploited and official influence and police machinery were used to pressure them into executing the sale. The family’s allegations go beyond the original registry. Ramesh Lodhi’s son Akash has alleged that when his father later attempted to have the disputed registry and transfer cancelled, the family was threatened. Investigators will now have to determine who issued those alleged threats, whether they were connected to the property transaction and whether any serving police personnel or official resources were used to exert pressure.
A decade after that celebrated transition, Pachisia now finds herself on the other side of a criminal case, accused of using the very police machinery she was entrusted with to protect citizens to allegedly pressure a murder accused’s family into selling land worth nearly Rs 83 lakh for just Rs 18.20 lakh. The property’s value was Rs 82.86 lakh, according to the police inquiry. Yet investigators allege that Lodhi’s family was pressured into selling it for only Rs 18.20 lakh to Maroof Ahmed Hanafi. So, a property officially valued at nearly Rs 83 lakh was allegedly sold for less than one-fourth of that amount.
At the heart of the case is a property belonging to Ramesh Lodhi and a staggering gap between what government records said it was worth and the price at which it was allegedly made to change hands.
