Builder Pujit Aggarwal was on Thursday remanded in the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) custody till September 27, in connection with the Rs. 52 crore cheating case.
Aggarwal, who had been arrested by the Azad Maidan police, was arrested by the EOW on Wednesday for allegedly cheating Capri Global Advisory Services Pvt Ltd to the tune of Rs. 52 crore. An FIR had been registered against him in this regard in April and the agency has been investigating the matter since then.
He was produced in court on Thursday, where EOW officials told the court that they needed to find out where he spent the Rs. 52 crore that he allegedly swindled from the complainant firm.
“Several bank accounts of Aggarwal’s Orbit Corporation and documents pertaining to its finances since 2012, when Capri Global Advisory Services first invested money in his project in Lower Parel, are being examined,” an official said.
The complaint against Aggarwal said that he had in 2012 approached the complainant in connection with his project, Orbit Terraces, on N.M. Joshi Road in Lower Parel, assuring them that he would get extra FSI for the project. The firm invested money in eight units, and a year later, Aggarwal converted the investment to debt, putting up two properties as collateral. While one of the properties was a parking space instead of a commercial space as stated by Aggarwal in the debt agreement, the other had already been sold off to a third party.
Aggarwal is also alleged to have issued cheques to the complainant against an account that had already been frozen, after which the complainant approached the police.
The Hindu had first reported how hundreds of investors were left in the lurch after Orbit Residency Park, Aggarwal’s residential project in Saki Naka, was seized by the Life Insurance Corporation Housing Finance Limited when he defaulted on a Rs. 250-crore loan that he had taken from them in 2008.
He was subsequently arrested by the Azad Maidan police, who found that only Rs. 178 crore of the loan amount was used for construction of Orbit Residency Park, and investigations are under way to find out where the rest of the Rs. 82 crore was spent.
He is also alleged to have issued cheques to the complainant against an account that had been frozen
