R K Arora, the chairman and promoter of real estate major Supertech Group, on Wednesday urged a Delhi court to grant him interim bail for three months in a money laundering case, claiming he was suffering from various ailments. Arora told Additional Sessions Judge Devender Kumar Jangala he has lost around 10 kg since his arrest and required “urgent medical assistance”.
He was arrested on June 27, 2023 under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The judge adjourned the matter for further hearing on January 12.
The money laundering case against the Supertech group, its directors and promoters, stems from a clutch of FIRs registered by police in Delhi, Haryana, and Uttar Pradesh.
The ED has been probing 26 FIRs registered by the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh police against Supertech Ltd and its group companies for alleged criminal conspiracy, cheating, and criminal breach of trust and forgery. They have been accused of defrauding at least 670 home buyers of Rs 164 crore.
According to the charge sheet, the company and its directors hatched a “criminal conspiracy” to cheat people by collecting funds from prospective home buyers in advance against flats booked in their real estate projects.
The company did not adhere to the agreed obligation of providing possession of the flats in time and “defrauded” the general public, the agency has said.
The ED claimed its probe revealed the funds were collected by Supertech Limited and other group companies from home buyers.
The company also took project-specific term loans from banks and financial institutions for the purpose of construction of housing projects, the ED said.
However, these funds were “misappropriated and diverted” for buying land in the name of other group companies which were pledged as collateral to borrow funds from banks and financial institutions, it added.
The Supertech group also defaulted on payment to banks and financial institutions, in the process rendering around Rs 1,500 crore of such loans non-performing assets, the agency said.Supertech Ltd, which was formed in 1988, has so far delivered around 80,000 apartments, mainly in the Delhi-NCR region. The company is currently developing around 25 projects across the National Capital Region (NCR). It is yet to give possession to more than 20,000 buyers.