The Bengaluru police have arrested three individuals for allegedly duping a number of residents a complete of over Rs 50 crore by providing rented homes on lease.
The three have been recognized as Ramana, Naveen, and Sudhir – all of them labored as brokers of a property administration agency.
The prime accused within the case, Vivek Keshavan, who’s the proprietor of the property administration agency referred to as Catena Properties India Non-public Restricted, is absconding. The workplace of the agency is positioned in Digital Metropolis.
On Tuesday, a whole lot of victims approached the deputy commissioner of police (Digital Metropolis) and requested him to take motion within the matter.
How did the system run?
Catena Properties supplied homes on lease to residents, whereas telling homeowners that they have been giving the models on lease. Many residents, principally migrants, had taken homes on lease from the agency in Marathahalli, Banaswadi, Whitefield, and the Digital Metropolis space. Whereas Catena remained the bridge between homeowners and the residents, the home homeowners have been stored at the hours of darkness. Folks paid between Rs 20 lakh and Rs 50 lakh to get homes on lease.
Based on a police officer, the corporate bumped into losses through the COVID-19 lockdown as lots of their shoppers returned to their residence states. “There’s additionally data that the Revenue Tax division had carried out a raid in reference to violating tax norms and had frozen the corporate’s accounts,” the police officer mentioned.
Swapna, one of many victims, mentioned she had paid Rs 20 lakh to get a home on lease for 2 years. “We discovered Catena on nobroker.com, and later we paid them Rs 20 lakh for a 2BHK. However not too long ago, the home proprietor demanded that we vacate the home. I contacted Vivek and his staff to repay the cash, however they weren’t obtainable. Now, the proprietor is forcing us to go away the home, and my Rs 20 lakh is caught. We don’t know what to do,” she added.
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Venkat Ramu mentioned he paid Rs 25 lakh to Catena for a 3 BHK residence. “I took a mortgage from the financial institution and paid Rs 25 lakh. However now, the homeowners are asking to vacate. Catena brokers requested me to request the homeowners to present us a month, by which they’d repay the lease cash. We did the identical however didn’t get the cash again,” he additional mentioned.
A police officer mentioned a number of FIRs have been registered in reference to the case.