Court dismisses bail pleas of 3 directors of real estate group

Three directors of real estate group Earth Infrastructure Ltd, accused in three cases of duping over 8,500 buyers by not giving possession of their properties, have been denied bail by a Delhi court.
Additional Sessions Judge Chandra Shekhar dismissed the anticipatory bail applications of two directors -- Vikas Gupta and Atul Gupta -- and the regular bail plea of another director Rajneesh Mittal, who is in custody for over three months.
The court rejected their submissions that they have given a proposal for settlement to some of the investors and the matter be referred to the mediation cell.
The court observed that they have made a proposal only to get some relief as they have been summoned by a trial court in three separate FIRs.

It also observed that if a compromise is to take place, it has to be done between all the aggrieved investors, the company and its directors.
"It seems the two accused want to get anticipatory bail by merely supplying the proposal of settlement to some of the investors or some of their associations, though the investors are stated to be about 8,500," it said.

The judge said "if the compromise is to take place, same is to take place with all the aggrieved investors and the company and its directors. The accused persons have not given the proposal to all the aggrieved investors so far though they have records of all of them with them.

"Therefore, it seems that it would not be in the interest of justice to grant anticipatory bail to the two accused persons in the three cases."
Dismissing the bail plea of Mittal, the court observed that filing of charge sheet in two cases is not a sufficient ground to grant him the relief.
The Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police had filed two charge sheets in the FIRs lodged in relation to three residential-cum-commercial projects on the Yamuna Expressway in Greater Noida area of Uttar Pradesh.
Advocate Amit Kumar, representing the Earth Buyer Victim Association, opposed the bail pleas saying the FIRs were lodged a long time agp and the accused directors had not come up with any concrete proposal earlier.

He claimed the accused had e-mailed a proposal to some of the investors just a night before the court hearing, due to which the victims were not able to consider it in a short time and alleged that it was made just to seek bail.
The counsel for the accused, however, said the finalisation of settlement would take considerable time and if the directors were arrested, the proposal would be frustrated.
The directors sought three months anticipatory bail and interim bail respectively for effective participation in the mediation process.
The complainants' counsel told the court that the total amount of money involved in all the three projects was nearly Rs 524 crore, which may go up to Rs 1000 crores.

He said as per the documents, an approval was given to the company by the Greater Noida Authority in 2013 but it had started accepting bookings for the properties in 2012.
The properties were to be handed over in the next three years, but till date, they have not been handed the possession, he said.