RTI activist, sons held, accused of cheating banks over property loan

Gurgaon: Harinder Dhingra, a man often in the news for his right to information pleas on corruption in public offices, was arrested along with his two sons on Monday in a cheating case. Dhingra and his family members are accused of defrauding two banks of several crores through loan against property.
Dhingra’s wife, daughter-in-law and grandson were issued notices by police to join the investigation. Police said they received a complaint on April 16, and after investigating it, filed an FIR against Dhingra, his wife Poonam, their sons Prashant and Tarun, daughter-in-law Tani and grandson at DLF-1 police station on Monday. The FIR has charges under sections 420 (cheating), 467, 468 and 471 (forgery), and 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC. Police have formed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe the allegations. The complainant is Tarun Bateja, a Malibu Town resident. Bateja’s connection with the case remained unclear.
The case centres around the Dhingras’ house, built on a 500 square yard plot, in DLF-1. Police said Dhingra bought the property in 2001 and in 2003, Poonam and Prashant – through their company Elegance Fabrics Pvt Ltd – took a loan from Indian Overseas Bank against the property. In 2004, the loan of around Rs 3 crore was declared an NPA by the bank, which filed a case before the Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT) in Delhi and filed for attachment of property.
“To save the property from attachment, Prashant filed a case before court to seek claim over the property. In November 2006, they reached a compromise at Lok Adalat and transferred the property in the name of Prashant. Now, the bank could not attach the property as ownership was changed,” said ACP (DLF) Karan Goel.
In 2007, Prashant mortgaged the property with OBC Bank for a loan of Rs 8 crore for his firm Tarun Exports. This loan also became an NPA in 2008. OBC Bank issued notice for recovery of Rs 10 crore (loan and interest) and filed a case at DRT Chandigarh and also filed for attachment of the property, police said.
This time, Tarun filed a case before Gurgaon court, challenging the Lok Adalat decision of 2006 and staking claim over the property. The court stayed the 2006 order of the Lok Adalat. The case reached the Punjab and Haryana high court in February 2016. Police claimed Dhingra, in the meantime, forged documents to transfer the property to his Tarun and Prashant’s son in December 2016. “All of them live in the same house and keep on transferring property in each other’s name after taking loan from banks,” said the ACP.
Before his arrest, Dhingra told TOI, “The case is baseless and matters related to loans are pending before court. I had raised issues against the police chief and a case was filed against me as vendetta,” said Dhingra.
In a statement, police said Dhingra claimed to be an RTI activist, but he and some others misused the RTI Act to extort money from government officials and builders. The police statement also alleged Dhingra and an associate had encroached over prime land in DLF, which the cops had removed. It urged people to share information and documents about Dhingra and his associates with the police.