No mercy for developers who dupe: High Court
Delhi High Court has expressed concern over rising instances of township developers duping people after accepting huge amounts as booking charges for projects, maintaining such offenders deserved no mercy.
It is to be remembered that the investors are losing their hard earned money, said the court. The comments came while it rejected the bail plea of Sanjay Gambhir, a citybased developer accused of cheating the public to the tune of crore.
“Offences which have been committed by the petitioner with other co-accused are of high magnitude of mass public fraud and cheating, and such offences being on high rise in the city, the petitioner does not deserve any mercy,” said Justice ML Mehta. Gambhir, as the director of D.D. Infrastructure along with the co-accused, including his wife and son, had allegedly launched certain township projects in Faridabad, Sonepat, Zirakpur and Mohali in 2005-06.
According to police, amounts running into crores of rupees were received as booking charges. It is alleged that the amount was collected fraudulently, as none of the proposed projects were approved by authorities. Gambhir was on interim bail till December 22 last year. But after he failed to comply with the conditions during the interim bail, including refund of money with interest to the investors, the court cancelled the interim protection and he has been in custody since then.
The court said there was no way the developer could be granted bail as the number of complainants/investors continued to rise. “All the complainants/investors have been raising hue and cry for having been duped of their hard earned money and the prosecutor as also the investigating agency is pressing for custodial interrogation for the investigation of the FDI amount of about crore, which had been received by the petitioner and his coaccused persons.”
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