Army officer’s wife cheated by real-estate agent

Gurgaon: The wife of a senior Army officer was allegedly duped of Rs 31.5lakh by a real-estate agent in a fake land deal. The accused allegedly sold two plots in a non-existent real-estate project located in Bhiwadi, Rajasthan, promising 25% annual returns under the buyback scheme. Reji Kurian, a resident of Delhi Cant and wife of a colonel, lodged a complaint at the Sector 40 police station on Saturday.
Kurian said that in 2014, she was looking for a plot to build a house and got in touch with one of her distant relatives, Nitesh Sharma, a resident of Rajiv Nagar, Gurgaon. Sharma introduced her to Manoj Kumar Choudhary in June 2014. Choudhary claimed to have a real-estate project ‘Viscaria The Greens’ on Alwar road in Bhiwadi. Kurian then had a meeting with Choudhary at his office in the Sector 31 market. The office was in the name of Viscaria Real Estate Pvt Ltd. Choudhary proposed to sell two plots of 175 square metres and 125 square metres in the same project and lured her in the name of a buy back scheme, promising 25% annual returns. He also promised to buy back the plot after four years.

In July 2014, Kurian paid a token amount of Rs 3.5 lakh and the next month, Choudhary executed the agreement. To complete it, Kurian paid another Rs 28 lakh in September 2014. After a year, when Kurian approached Choudhary for the promised return on her investment, she was given three cheques but all of them bounced. In January 2016, when she threatened to file a police complaint, Choudhary transferred Rs 1 lakh into her account and said he would return the remaining amount in the next six months. “After six months, he refused to pay the money and started threatening me,” said Kurian. She later found out that the land sold to her did not belong to Choudhary nor did any such project exist. It was government land. When she tried to approach Choudhary about this, he shut down his office and disappeared.

A spokesperson of Gurgaon police Subhash Boken said a case had been registered against Choudhary under IPC sections 406 (criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 471 (using forged document as genuine) and 506 (criminal intimidation).