Builder booked for cheating flat buyers of ₹2.72 crore in redevelopment project
According to the police, Nerulkar said that when he first heard of the project in 2013, Shroff and other employees of Sunvision told him that a 17-floor building was to come up in the project alongside the redeveloped building
Mumbai: A developer has been booked for allegedly duping buyers of three flats in a redevelopment project to the tune of ₹2.72 crore on the pretext of selling flats.
The complainant, Paresh Nerulkar, Uday Dongre and Shailesh Shetty, in their FIR, said that they had paid the money to Sunvision Estates, which is owned by the accused, identified as Suresh Shroff for buying flats in the project named Visava/Adhyay. The complainant also told the police that there are ten more investors of the project who were cheated.
According to the police, Nerulkar said that when he first heard of the project in 2013, Shroff and other employees of Sunvision told him that a 17-floor building was to come up in the project alongside the redeveloped building.
“I was interested in buying all four flats on the top floor for which I paid ₹82 lakh as a token amount. We were also promised of getting possession by 2017. However, by then, no construction work had started at all,” he told the police. He also said that later he learnt through RERA website that the seventeenth floor of the project was not even approved.
Subsequently, other investors also came forward with similar stories of having paid the money to book flats but not receiving any documents to prove ownership. Among them were Shetty, who had paid ₹80 lakh for the twelfth floor of the project and Dongre, who had paid ₹1.10 crore as full payment for a flat on the thirteenth floor.
“The buyers said that they have done everything from repeated reminders to sending legal notices to the builder. However, nothing came of it, so they decided to lodge a police complaint,” said an officer from DN Nagar police station. He said that further investigation of the case was underway.
Shroff, however, said that the complaint based on which the FIR is lodged relies on distorted facts. “The complaiant paid the money on purely commercial terms, which we are ready to repay. The nature of this complaint merely shows that they are trying to misuse the security offered and pump out more money than agreed,” he added.
Shroff has been booked under sections 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code and the relevant section of Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Act.
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