3 Amrapali directors sent to police custody
ACTION SC says no more ‘hide and seek’ after group fails to submit documents sought
NEWDELHI:THREE directors of real estate company Amrapali were taken into police custody on the orders of the Supreme Court on Tuesday after they failed to hand over account books of 46 group companies to forensic auditors appointed by the top court.
A bench of justices Arun Misra and UU Lalit said the directors, Anil Kumar Sharma, Shiv Priya and Ajay Kumar, will remain in custody until they hand over the documents, as ordered by the court on September 12 and 26. The court was forced to call the police after the directors failed to comply with its directives.
“We are constrained to observe that it is not only deliberate non-compliance of the order but effort is being made to fritter away the documents in utter violation of the order passed by this Court. No justification could be pointed out by the learned counsel appearing on behalf of the Amrapali Group of Companies for not complying with the orders passed by this Court,” the court said in its order.
The bench added: “In the circumstances, since it is necessary to hand over the documents to the forensic auditors, considering the non-compliance evident on record, we find that there is no other way except to direct the Police to seize all the documents and to hand over the documents to the forensic auditors after seizing them from the possession of 46 Companies and their Director”.
Amrapali Group has been accused of delaying the construction of apartments and handing over their possession to homebuyers in its projects in Noida and Greater Noida in the national capital region centred on the capital.increasingly impatient, the Supreme Court in August warned that it would order the sale of “each and every property” of the firm to recover the cost of construction of pending real estate projects, The group had earlier told the court in an affidavit that it was not in a position to complete the projects and give timely possession of flats to over 42,000 homebuyers.
Amrapali is the second real estate company based in the NCR against whose directors the Supreme Court, which has been approached by homebuyers, has ordered action in connection with non-completion of housing projects. Unitech Ltd’s directors Sanjay Chandra and Ajay Chandra have been in jail since September last year in connection with a cheating case registered against them.
“I am happy with the Supreme Court’s order as the directors of Amrapali are in police custody now. These directors were trying to fool the buyers, but after tough action from the court we hope that our flats will be delivered without further delay. The delivery of my flat is delayed for last eight years.
The sad part is that these directors did not provide required details even after repeated orders from the apex court,” said KK Kaushal of the Amrapali Dream Valley Buyers’ Group, who has purchased a unit in the Greater Noida property.