Ansal API honchos arrested for trust breach in Lucknow

LUCKNOW: A director of real estate giant Ansal API , Arun Mishra, and company vice-president Harish Gulla were arrested on Friday after a local court issued non-bailable warrants (NBW) against them on Thursday in a case of breach of trust and dishonesty.
NBWs were also been issued against company chairman Sushil Ansal and his son, Pranav, a director in the organisation, police said.
People have lodged 85 FIRs against the company’s officials at various police stations in Lucknow since July 2018 in which they allege that company took lakhs of rupees from them but did not give them possession of the property promised at the time of the deal. The cases are related to the company’s different projects in the city.
When the complainants found the police had not taken any action, one of them, Awadhesh Giri, approached the court of the chief judicial magistrate (CJM) which issued the NBWs.
In his complaint, Giri alleged that he had booked a plot in a township proposed by the company on the Rae Bareli road and had paid Rs 11.34 lakh on October 13, 2011. Later, he paid an additional Rs 5 lakh to get a plot in a prime location in the proposed township. When he did not get possession of the land even after seven years, he asked the company to pay back his money but officials did not respond to his repeated requests.
He then lodged an FIR at Vibhutikhand police station on February 26, 2019 against four officials. Vibhutikhand SHO Rajeev Dwivedi said investigations have revealed that in most cases the company had taken several crore rupees from buyers but had not given them possession of the properties they had paid for. “Buyers were first lured by offering them property at low rates and later asked to pay more if they wanted a prime location. The company also provided the facility of payment in installments,” he said. Investors included small businessmen, serving and retired government officers and private executives.