Hyderabad police Saturday arrested top builder Gowri Shankar Gupta for cheating construction and real estate major DLF to the tune of over Rs.300 crore.
Gupta, owner of PVR malls, was untraced and on the run for five months. He was arrested by the Central Crime Station (CCS), a wing of the city police, Saturday.
Gupta, his wife Sarita Gupta, brother Gopal Gupta, and six others were booked by the CCS in February this year for cheating, criminal breach of trust, misappropriation and criminal conspiracy. Two cases were registered on a complaint by DLF Universal Ltd.
The economic offences court in March had dismissed the anticipatory bail pleas of Gupta and his brother but granted bail to Sarita Gupta and six others.
According to police, SBPL Infrastructure Ltd, owned by Gupta, defrauded DLF by giving controversial properties as security for six real estate projects. Gupta had taken advances of Rs.284 crore in cheques and Rs.30 crore in cash from DLF for building shopping malls and other projects in a joint venture.
The projects include a shopping complex on the prime land of Gandhi Medical College in the heart of the city.
Gupta had allegedly claimed that he had a lease for 99 years for Gandhi Medical College land but actually the government had granted him lease of only 33 years. Gupta brought in DLF as a third party for the project in violation of an order from the government.
A city-based businessman was arrested for allegedly acquiring over 24 acres of government land fraudulently, after forging documents of a real estate developer, police said today.
The accused Gowri Shankar Gupta was arrested here last night by the Central Crime Station, a wing of Hyderabad police, which investigated the case, following a complaint by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) in March this year, they said.
–PTi