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Former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan's wife Amita had lent Rs 6 lakh to her sister-in-law Seema Sharma to purchase a flat in the scam-tainted Adarsh building located in south Mumbai.
This was stated by Seema Sharma, who deposed on Friday, before the two-member inquiry commission set up by the state government to probe the allegations of irregularities in the plush 31-storey high-rise.
Chavan is one of the 13 accused in the multi-crore scam, against whom the charge-sheet was filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation on July 4.
"I had applied for membership in Adarsh in 2003. My membership was sanctioned in 2008. I paid a total of Rs 73.33 lakh towards purchase of a flat in Adarsh. Out of this amount, my husband had taken a loan of Rs 12 lakh (collectively) from his mother Bhagwati Sharma and his sister Amita Chavan," Seema Sharma told the judicial panel of Justice (retired) J A Patil and member P Subrahmanyam.
Seema's husband Vinod Sharma is Amita's brother.
According to Seema, her mother-in-law and sister-in-law (Amita) gave Rs 6 lakh each as loan to buy the flat in Adarsh.
Seema, however, claimed she did not remember whether Ashok Chavan was a cabinet minister when she had applied for membership and if he was the chief minister when it was granted to her in 2008.
The allegation against Ashok Chavan is that he showed undue favours to Adarsh Society and in return procured three flats for his relatives -- Seema Sharma, Bhagwati Sharma and his father-in-law's brother Madanlal Sharma.
Madanlal had said during his deposition that his niece Amita had "forged" a rent receipt to secure a flat in Adarsh by showing herself the owner of a suburban flat, which is actually owned by him.
While Seema had applied for the membership in 2003 when Chavan was the revenue minister, Bhagwati and Madanlal sought the memberships in 2009 when Chavan was the chief minister.