Addl Director Of Real Estate Firm Arrested For Duping Home Buyers In Bhubaneswar Of Rs 15 Crore

Bhubaneswar: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW), Bhubaneswar, on Thursday arrested additional director of Mishra Creations Pvt Ltd, a real estate company, on the allegation of duping several home buyers of nearly Rs 15 crore.

The accused has been identified as Santosh Kumar Rath.

According to EOW, he was arrested on the basis of the written complaint of Swadesh Ray Chaudhury of Rasulgarh, Bhubaneswar, who had booked a flat in ‘UTOPIA’ project of the real estate firm at Chandaka in 2016 and paid an advance of Rs 16 lakh to MD Jyoti Ranjan Mishra. “He took a bank loan to give the advance and had also entered a tripartite agreement with the builder and the bank. The flat was to be handed over within 30 months, but till date no flat has been given to him nor the real estate company has refund the invested amount,” the release said.

Rath was looking after the marketing of UTOPIA Project. Later, he was appointed as the additional director of the company. He along with the MD had collected more than Rs 15 crore from around 130 investors from 2016 to provide flats in the project at Anlapatna, Chandaka, where the firm was constructing 10 blocks. It had promised the investors to hand over the flats within 30 months of booking. “After taking almost 95% of the total cost of the flats, the real estate company did not hand over any single flat to the investors even after the elapse of 8 years and had been giving false assurance from time to time under different pretexts. It was also found that the duo had conducted multiple transactions and booked flats in the name of different investors.”

The MD, who arrested in May this year, is currently in jail custody and further investigation is on, the release said, adding that they have been charged under Sections 406, 420, 467, 468, 471, 120-B of the IPC and Section 6 of the OPID Act.