Realtor arrested for involvement in duping 242 homebuyers of ₹89 crores

A realtor was arrested for allegedly duping 242 home buyers of ₹89 crore over a housing project, fleeing to Indonesia before capture at Delhi airport.

A 33-year-old realtor was arrested on Sunday for his alleged involvement in duping 242 home buyers of approximately ₹89 crore over housing society project on Golf Course Road in Sector 55, police said on Wednesday. Officers said the accused was on the run for over a year and was arrested from the IGI Airport in Delhi while trying to flee.

He was arrested and produced before a city court on Monday and was taken on two-day police remand for interrogation. He has been sent to judicial custody on Wednesday. (Shutterstock)

The accused Anubhav (single name) is a resident of Mohan Garden in Delhi. They said he was escaping to Indonesia on Sunday night when airport authorities alerted the Gurugram Police economic offences wing (EOW) due to a lookout circular against him.

He was arrested and produced before a city court on Monday and was taken on two-day police remand for interrogation. He has been sent to judicial custody on Wednesday.

Anubhav’s counsel advocate Vedpal Yadav said the charges against him were false and fabricated.

“Police have implicated him in the case which was originally against his father. They had alleged that he started running the firm by forging documents and that he signed an MoU with another firm for selling the disputed flats,” Yadav said, adding that Anubhav had no knowledge of any operations of the firm as he was studying abroad until 2016 when his father was running the real estate business here.

Sandeep Turan, public relations officer of Gurugram said Anubhav’s father and five others had launched a residential project named Sunhera Apna Ghar Society in 2008 on an acre plot along the Golf Course Road on Sector 55.

“94 apartments were constructed but money was collected from 242 home buyers till 2014,” he said.

Some of the home buyers jointly filed a complaint against the realty firm and an FIR under cheating and forgery was registered at Sector-56 police station on April 3, 2017.

EOW officials said that five suspects including Anubhav’s father were arrested in the case. However, he died in a road crash on January 26, 2019. Officials said Anubhav forged the documents of the project and took over after his father’s death.

“He started rotating investors’ money and tried trapping more victims on basis of the MOU on the partially constructed project after 2020 when police started searching for him. However, he managed to seek interim relief from courts to buy time until Supreme Court rejected his bail on February 10 last year as he never cooperated in the investigation. A day before, he had fled to Indonesia,” an EOW official said.

A senior police officer said that five months back, he entered India via Nepal. “He kept changing his location and was finally arrested on Sunday. We are investigating the money trail to seize proceeds of crime so that buyers get back their investment from court,” he said.

Babulal Datick, one of the investors, said several of the home buyers are still paying monthly instalments of their bank loans for more than a decade.