Real estate company’s MD held for Rs 1,000 crore fraud!

Vigneshwara Developers Pvt Ltd, MD

Despite a spate of fraud cases involving the unscrupulous builders and gullible investors being reported almost every alternate day, it seems the common flat buyers and investors have not learn’t a lesson.

In a repeat of sorts, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the national capital recently nabbed the managing director of a prominent real estate company for allegedly cheating around 700 hundreds of investors to the tune of Rs 1,000 crore.

Shockingly, nine FIRs were registered against the accused, Sunil Dahiya, at various police stations across the National capital region and he was wanted in several cases of fraudulent cases, the police told newsmen after arresting the builder.

Addressing newsmen, Mangesh Kashyap, DCP, EOW said that the police team laid a trap at Sunder Nagar after getting a lead on him. As soon as Dahiya drove to Sunder Nagar in a chauffer-driven BMW car and stepped out. The police team pounced upon him, caught him and brought to EOW’s headquarters on Mandir Marg where he was grilled for his involvement in the mega-scam, Kashyap informed. The car in which Dahiya was traveling is registered in the name of Vigneshwara Developers Pvt Ltd and has now been seized by the EOW. Dahiya was produced in a court, which remanded him in police custody.

The top cop informed that as many as eight mobile phones, an iPod, a laptop, several credit and debit cards and other documents were seized from him.

In a brazen challenge to the law, the builder who knew all the time that the police were following him and that he was under the watch, still tried to evade arrest by staying in various five-star hotels for many days. The day he was arrested, he was planning to leave for Chandigarh but his luck ran out and was arrested.

Revealing the extent of fraud, Kashyap said that at least 700 people had invested in the two projects. “Till now, the EOW has got complaints from about 350 investors who have been allegedly deceived to the amount of Rs 160 crore by the accused company’s directors,” Kashyap said. The total amount of their fraud exceeds Rs 1,000 crore, the police said.

Disclosing the modus operandi of these the directors of the realty firm, police said that the directors Sunil Dahiya, Sanjay Dahiya and Daryao Singh allegedly attracted people through advertisement in print and online media. They also gave personal assurances to investors that they would benefit if they invested in their projects. They made unrealistic promises to the investors about the project assured high returns, but they neither paid the returns nor fulfilled the promises about completion of the projects. The investors were enticed to sell off their immovable properties to Vigneshwara group under the barter transaction. Though the directors made the payment against the sale, they got the same invested back in its projects and thus retained their sales proceeds. The realty firm lacked the necessary approvals required for completion of the residential projects, Kashyap said.