New Delhi: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police has arrested a retired employee of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) for allegedly defrauding university professors of Rs 11 crore on the pretext of providing affordable housing.
According to the EOW statement to the media, released Thursday, the accused — 63-year-old P.D. Gaikwad — misused his position as senior technical assistant at JNU and lured 13 professors from the university and Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, into investing in a society allegedly established in 2011.
Gaikwad was arrested on 14 December and is currently in judicial custody.
He had told the professors that the project would be under the aegis of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), to give it a stamp of legitimacy.
The police, during its investigation, found that Gaikwad had collected Rs 11 crore between 2011 and 2021 in a bank account created in the society’s name — Noble Socio-Scientific Welfare Organisation (NSSWO) — and misappropriated the funds through withdrawals and transfers.
The police had registered an FIR in January this year based on complaints by professors, who said the accused first established the NSSWO and asked them to become paid members.
Gaikwad, according to the statement, told them the NSSWO was in the process of acquiring land from the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) — as part of its land-pooling policy — and the professors subsequently booked flats in the would-be project.
“It was alleged by the complainants that in the year 2015, accused P.D. Gaikwad, who was working as a Scientific Officer at the School of Environmental Sciences, JNU, New Delhi, formed the Noble Socio-Scientific Welfare Organisation (NSSWO) claiming to provide affordable housing,” Deputy Commissioner of Police (EOW) Surendra Choudhary said.
The accused also took buyers to Najafgarh — which comes under the DDA’s land pooling area — to show a plot where the promised housing project was to come up. Additionally, he would provide them regular updates to keep up their trust in him.
However, the statement said that the complainants eventually caught on and began questioning Gaikwad.
In 2019, Gaikwad wrote to professors asking them to transfer their NSSWO membership to a new housing society — Siddhartha Officers Housing & Social Welfare Society.
By this time, the professors had had enough and asked Gaikwad to return the money. They alleged that Gaikwad then went silent on them.
The statement added that Gaikwad would use artistic promotional material for the housing project to entice buyers, and always stressed that it was under the DDA’s land-pooling policy.
However, investigators cross-checked with the DDA and found it had neither given any approval for housing projects in Dwarka nor had it authorised any society like the NSSWO to offer flats.
The EOW also sought details from the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) in Delhi and found that the society established by Gaikwad was neither registered nor had an application been submitted for registration.
Choudhary said a scrutiny of the society’s bank account revealed it had received more than Rs 11 crore which had been taken out through cash withdrawals and transfers to other accounts.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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