Director of Delhi's Earth Galleria arrested for duping buyers

A day after the arrest of three directors of the 3C real estate firm, the economic offences wing (EOW) of Delhi Police has arrested Atul Gupta, director at Earth Galleria, for allegedly duping buyers of crores. Investigations started a few months ago after over three dozen buyers approached EOW to report the fraud in the project called Earth Skygate located on Dwarka Expressway. Additional commissioner Subhashish Chaudhary said that the role of other directors is under investigation. Gupta will be produced before a court and taken on remand for interrogation. More arrests are likely. Gupta has been booked under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 120B (criminal conspiracy) and questioned about the alleged diversion of money taken from buyers. The FIR has been lodged against Earth infrastructure, Earth Galleria, AMB Infrabuild and directors Avdhesh Goyal, Atul Gupta, Rajneesh Mittal, Vikas Gupta, ManojSethi and Saurabh Mukund. Sources said the arrests are part of a drive launched by EOW to crack down on real estate firms booked for forgery. Special commissioner (crime and EOW) Satish Golcha is supervising the probes. In their complaint against Earth Galleria, the buyers said that the project located in Sector 88, Gurgaon was supposed to have shops, banks, restaurants, food court, entertainment zones and virtual spaces. The firm had allegedly promised to pay 12% of the payment received from buyers till possession. “To execute these terms and conditions, the builder had entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the land owner and buyers. The company has already taken 90% of the due money from buyers, but no construction has started. Not a single brick has been placed even after three years of the launch,” the FIR mentions. The buyers also alleged that the company stopped paying them 12% returns since 2015 despite most of them having paid the maximum amount of their allotted property on the insistence of the builder. The Earth Group is being probed by Noida police as well for fraud with homebuyers. Last week, crime branch arrested the company’s assistant general manager (projects) for allegedly creating shell companies to invest money from the projects of Earth Iconic Infrastructures Private Limited and Earth Infrastructure Private Limited. In August, the senior vice-president of Earth Iconic infrastructure had been arrested. Before that, Vikas Gupta, who was also a director at Earth Group, was arrested by EOW. Company officials couldn’t be reached for comments.