Two arrested for duping investors of more than ₹30 crore

NEWDELHI: A couple who are professional con artists and have scammed several persons and financial institutions of at least ₹30 crore were arrested by Delhi police on Sunday from their hideout in Ghaziabad, the police said.

Vinod Bansal, 57, and his 56-year-old wife, Preeti Bansal, have been together booked in 20 cases of cheating registered across India. They had been declared proclaimed offenders in half of them by courts in Delhi, Haryana and Punjab, said Vijay Kumar, deputy commissioner of police (south).

“Three of the cases in which the couple was wanted were registered by the Central Bureau of Investigation,” said the DCP.

The Delhi Police had been pursuing the couple because they were proclaimed offenders in a case registered by the city police’s economic offences wing.

“A team from Kotla Mubarakpur police station was behind proclaimed offenders. We visited all the addresses we had of the couple and interrogated many people who knew them. Our efforts helped us get the exact address of the couple, but our police team in plainclothes visited the house to realize they had already fled,” said the DCP.

The couple was finally caught from their hideout in Surya Vihar in Ghaziabad on Sunday. The couple turned out to be graduates and natives of Bhatinda in Punjab. They had married in 1983 and have a son. “Vinod had begun as a property dealer in Faridabad and gone on to purchase an office space in Karol Bagh in 1995. The same year, he purchased a factory in Murthal,” said the DCP.

Vinod was first arrested by the CBI in 2006 in a group housing scam. When he was released from the jail after several months, he opened a school in Ludhiana and went on to take the franchise of several prominent private schools, said the DCP.

“He lured people to invest in his schools, but went on to dupe them,” said the DCP.

“He later returned to Delhi, purchased a property in the posh Green Park, but sold the mortgaged floors of the building to unsuspecting investors, without informing them that the properties were mortgaged,” said the DCP. He also allegedly borrowed crores from financial institutions and about ₹10 crore from private investors. The couple was together arrested in 2016, but they jumped bail, after which they were declared proclaimed offenders.