EOW arrests Nirmal Lifestyle promoters Dharmesh, Rajeev Jain

Mumbai: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police on Thursday arrested the promoters of Nirmal Lifestyle, Dharmesh Jain and his nephew Rajeev Jain, for allegedly failing to hand over flats to around 34 homebuyers invested in four projects in Mulund

Mumbai: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Mumbai Police on Thursday arrested the promoters of Nirmal Lifestyle, Dharmesh Jain and his nephew Rajeev Jain, for allegedly failing to hand over flats to around 34 homebuyers invested in four projects in Mulund. “We have arrested them in connection with a First Information Report (FIR) filed in 2022,” said an EOW official. “We produced them in court, which granted us police custody till May 3.”

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Home buyers from different Nirmal Lifestyle projects, including Olympia, Panorama, Spirit and Amethyst, had filed complaints with the EOW, and the police had carried out a detailed investigation before arresting the Jains.

The Nirmal Lifestyle group has been facing financial constraints for some time, which has led to the stalling of multiple housing projects in Mulund and Kalyan. According to the data published by MahaRERA on its portal on Wednesday, as many as 28 different projects registered by the group with the Authority are currently facing insolvency proceedings before the National Company Law Tribunal. Some of these have lapsed registration certificates, and some are still ongoing with less than 50 per cent of work complete, trapping several the home buyers who have invested in these projects.

“We have 220 buyers who booked their flats in 2004,” said a member of the Amethyst Cooperative Housing Society residents’ association. “The project is 85 percent complete but in the last eight years, it has been at a standstill. It is not just financial constraints. The developer has not paid the statutory dues of over ₹60 crore to the BMC since 2016 but the civic body took no action against him—in fact, it allowed him to pay his dues in installments. We have also appealed to MahaRERA but haven’t got any relief for the last four years.”

In at least two of the Nirmal Lifestyle projects, the developers had signed consent terms to refund buyers but did not fulfil these. The Mumbai suburban collector had scheduled an auction of the ₹40-crore Jawahar Talkies compound in Mulund belonging to the Nirmal Lifestyle group, to repay 120 Olympia home buyers—however, the auction has been repeatedly stalled after the Kolkata-based SREI group moved the high court, staking its claim on the land. Last month, the high court quashed the auction again, based on petitions filed by SREI group companies.