Mumbai: In addition to cases filed against them in Kharghar and Khandeshwar, the partners of Monarch Universal Group now have one registered with the Kalamboli police, this time for cheating a Dubai-based businessman who had booked around 17 flats worth ₹4.55 crore.
The accused are already in the EOW’s custody for the Khandeshwar case, Senior Police Inspector Shivaji Awate from EOW-I said, “And after their remand gets over, we will seek extension of their remand for the case registered in Kalamboli.”
The complainant, Kunal Shevkarmani, runs a steel business in Dubai. In 2011, Mr. Shevkarmani’s father and some other relatives had visited the Monarch offices in Navi Mumbai and booked four flats worth ₹1.2 crore at Monarch Imperial, Kalamboli, Sector 17. A few months later, Mr. Shevkarmani booked another 10 flats and put down 80% of the cost, ₹2.58 crore, which he paid in US dollars. Later, several of his relatives also booked and made payments for flats: uncle Vishnu Jethani paid ₹10 lakh through RTGS, cousin Meeta Sadvani in 2012 paid ₹31.6 lakh, and in 2013 Nitesh Kriplani paid ₹51 lakh.
“All the buyers were told that the flats will be registered and allocated to them a year after booking. But after repeated communication, the builders did not repay the booking amount, Mr Shevkarmani approached Kalamboli police and registered the case,” Mr. Awate said.
Flats sold to others
The police say that around seven of the flats booked by Mr. Shevkarmani and his relatives were sold by the builder to other customers. Mr Awate says that the methods such ‘builders’ use is the same: raise investments to fund the project, and when unable to repay the investors in time, give flats that had bene booked and paid for to the investors.
“This is cheating both customer as well as the investors,” he said. “We suspect around 1,000 people would have got cheated by the Monarch group. We urge everyone who has invested in their projects to come forward and report it.”
An FIR had been filed in April against Monarch’s partners, but they evaded arrest for more than four months. Finally, two of the partners, brothers Gopal Thakur (41) and Hasmukh Thakur (42), had been arrested by the Economic Offence Wing Unit I, last month; the third partner, Roshan Seth (37) was also arrested last week.
They were accused of cheating a complainant who had, in 2013, bought a shop from them and paid ₹46 lakh but had neither got possession of the shop nor his money back.
The Thakur brothers had been arrested before, in October 2015, when in hiding after two similar cases were registered against them in CBD Belapur and Kalamboli. In April that year, a property investor had registered an FIR against Monarch Builders’ directors for cheating him of ₹7 crore which he had paid for 22 flats in Kalamboli and later learnt that they had been mortgaged to a financial firm from whom Monarch had taken a ₹40 crore loan. Also in 2015, another buyer had paid ₹66 lakh for a flat in a Monarch project in Ulhasnagar, but got neither the flat nor a refund. The accused had been arrested under sections 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 34 (common intention) of the IPC and Section 8 of The Maharashtra Ownership Flat Act (MOFA).
