The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the bail plea of Amrapali founder and former chairman Anil Kumar Sharma, saying he did not deserve any sympathy for cheating thousands of homebuyers, reports Amit Anand Choudhary.
“You have cheated thousands of homebuyers. You siphoned off their hard-earned money and their life savings. You do not deserve any sympathy,” the bench said. The court, which is trying to get the flats constructed, said the mess created by the company’s erstwhile management is “very deep” and even the court is facing difficulties in tackling the problem.
Not a case of simple cheating: SC to Amrapali founder
Yours is not a case of simple cheating. See the plight of thousands of homebuyers. You cannot have our sympathy. You better enjoy being in jail… This court is very aware of what you did. You created the mess and we are not able to find a way out of it. A large number of homebuyers are suffering,” the bench of Justices Ajay Rastogi and Bela M Trivedi said.
Sharma’s lawyer pleaded that his client had been in jail for more than four and a half years and his coming out of jail would be good for the revival of the company. He requested the court to at least issue notice on his plea to seek response from the prosecuting agency. But the court refused and dismissed his plea.
Sharma and other directors of the company were arrested on the direction of the apex court after the forensic audit report revealed that a large amount of homebuyers’ money had been siphoned off by the management, leaving most of the housing projects incomplete in which more than 46,000 people had invested their money.
The apex court subsequently took over the company in order to protect the interests of homebuyers and appointed present attorney general R Venkataramani as receiver to manage its affairs. It has passed a slew of directions to generate funds to revive the company and complete the construction.
The apex court gave the task to NBCC to complete construction in 16 projects, consisting of 46,575 units of which nine projects are situated in Noida and the remaining in Greater Noida. As per NBCC, over Rs 8,000 crore is needed to complete all projects.
In 2019, the court held the Amrapali group, its CMD Anil Kumar Sharma and other directors responsible for siphoning off the money of homebuyers for personal gains and to expand their business empire.
