Chandigarh house grab case: Man who posed as house owner for sale deed arrested

Gurpreet Singh is the fifth person to be arrested in the case after journalist Sanjeev Mahajan, realtor Manish Gupta, suspended Chandigarh Police inspector Rajdeep Singh and Satpal Dagar, brother of a UT deputy superintendent of police

On the run for the past three months, Gurpreet Singh, accused of posing as Rahul Mehta, the victim in the Sector 37 property grab case, for the sale of his house, has been arrested.

Gurpreet, who was carrying a bounty of ₹50,000, surrendered before a court, following which he was arrested and sent to three-day police remand. (REUTERS FILE PHOTO)

Gurpreet is the fifth person to be arrested in the case after journalist Sanjeev Mahajan, realtor Manish Gupta, suspended Chandigarh Police inspector Rajdeep Singh and Satpal Dagar, brother of a UT deputy superintendent of police.

A police challan has already been filed into the case which was registered on March 2.

Gurpreet, who was carrying a bounty of ₹50,000, surrendered before a court, following which he was arrested and sent to three-day police remand.

According to police, he impersonated the owner of the property to execute its sale deed in March 2019.

Around 10 men are accused of kidnapping and torturing Rahul Mehta, 48, the only surviving heir of his family, in April 2017 to secure the general power of attorney of his 338 square yards house and selling it to Manish’s brother Saurabh Gupta for ₹2.9 crore in March 2019.

Among the other accused are liquor baron Arvind Singla and businessman Khalendra Singh Kadyan, to whom the property’s GPA was transferred, slain bouncer Surjit Singh, and Ashok Arora, Shekhar and Daljit Singh, who purportedly acted as witnesses in the sale of the house.

After the transfer of the GPA, Rahul was abandoned at a stud farm in Gujarat in June 2017, before being shifted from one charitable home to another in Maharashtra, Delhi and Rajasthan, where he was finally traced.