Maharashtra: CID to investigate Karrm developers housing scam

The Bombay High Court has ordered the statersquos director general of police to transfer the case of Karrm Developers who allegedly duped over 11500 flat buyers in different projects to the economic offences wing EOW of the state CID The decision came in recently after the courtrsquos suggestion to resolve the dispute through mitigation between the aggrieved customers and the developers did not yield any resultKarrm Developers allegedly sold flats in the housing complex to unsuspecting buyers using forged documentsUpset with the polices shoddy investigation the flat buyers accused the police of shielding the main perpetrators of the housing scam despite sufficient evidence midday had written a series of articles on the scam and in its article titled lsquoAnother housing scam involving 11500 homes hangs fire in high courtrsquo dated August 21 had highlighted project sanctioned with forged papers running into thousands of crores on the lines of Vasai Virar housing scamrsquoThe complaintIn the criminal writ petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution before the Bombay High Court the petitioners nineteen of them along with many other flat purchasers mostly from the lower middle class have been deceived by Karrm Infrastructure Private Limited and its directors into purchasing flats in their projectsmdashKarrm Residency at Dhasai village Shahpur Karrm Panchtatva at Kasagaon Shahpur and Karrm Brahmaand at Kelwe Road Palghar The writ petition further stated that FIRs have been registered at various police stations however for reasons best known no further action whatsoever is being taken against the said accused by the respective investigating officers of the police stations concernedOffences to be clubbed togetherThe public prosecutor informed the court that offences related to the three housing projects would be clubbed together and investigated by the Superintendent of Police Pankaj Deshmukh The Thane police have already initiated an inquiry against the errant police officials attached to Shahpur Naupada and Saphale police stations A DCP rank official from EOW Thane police has been appointed to conduct the inquiry against themMain accused still evading arrestThe whistleblower in the case Prabhuram Giri 60 who has been fighting for the rights of all the flat buyers in Karrm projects informed midday said ldquoThe main masterminds in the entire projects continue to evade arrest Out of the six persons shown as accused in the case the police have arrested only two The police have done nothing to arrest the masterminds who are still moving freely and continue to dupe thousands of innocent flat buyers to the tune of hundreds of croresrdquoNo action against banks adminisGiri said ldquoFinancial institutions and banks associated directly or indirectly with the project had given multiple loans to the same flats without any verification or title search Moreover this financial institution did not even bother to do their due diligence before the disbursement of the loan amount to the developer Besides the CIBIL many flat buyers have been adversely affected as they stopped paying EMI due to the project coming to a haltrdquoGiri said that they had demanded an enquiry into the alleged role of the Gram Panchayat and other local administrative and revenue officials who had connived with the developer and did not take action against the developer for using fake and forged documents to lure the customers by showcasing agricultural land as nonagricultural land Besides the commencement certificate and other statutory permissions have not been obtained by the developer for some of the projects which were still under construction ldquoUnfortunately neither the investigating police nor the court has considered our plea to take action against themrdquo said GiriWhat nextldquoWe are hopeful that the newly appointed state CID official will do a thorough investigation and would also expand its scope of investigation by bringing the banks financial institutions gram panchayat and revenue officials also under its probe and collect evidence against the alleged brains behind the housing scam under the banner of Karrm We had even moved MahaRERA but nothing happened We have faith in the Bombay High Court and are hopeful that justice will be done to safeguard the interest of the common man who had invested their life savings to buy a dream home almost a decade ago and it still remains a dreamrdquo Giri said The matter will be now listed for directions in the high court and will come up for hearing on January 31 2024