New Delhi: Less than a month after arresting alleged land mafia Sudhir Goyal on the charges of defrauding investors of crores of rupees, the Enforcement Directorate Tuesday conducted raids at 10 different locations linked to him and his associates, including his wife Rakhi, in Bulandshahr, ThePrint has learnt.
Goyal, Rakhi, and three others were arrested from Pilibhit on 15 December for building unauthorised colonies on illegally purchased land in Bulandshahr and then selling these plots to multiple investors.
The most significant charges under which the UP Police booked them include 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of the peace), and 506 (criminal intimidation) and sections of the Uttar Pradesh Gangsters and Anti-Social Activities (Prevention) Act, 1986.
The ED is investigating all five for money laundering, sources in the agency told ThePrint.
The raids came after the ED took cognisance of 18 First Information Reports (FIRs) filed by the Uttar Pradesh Police and registered an Enforcement Complaint Information Report (ECIR) — the formal entry of a complaint registered under the ED — in its zonal office in Lucknow Monday. The UP Police are investigating the suspects for fraud of nearly Rs 100 crore.
At a press conference on 16 December, Additional Superintendent of Police Anukriti Sharma alleged that Goyal and his associates would first buy land from farmers without paying adequate compensation, even withholding their bank accounts in some cases.
Then they would build colonies on such land without approvals from the Bulandshahr Development Authority— the government body in charge of giving construction approvals in Bulandshahr — and sell off plots to unsuspecting buyers, who were mostly from army and police families.
According to the police sources, the suspects had set up 11 such colonies, and individual plots of land were registered under multiple buyers at the same time.
When buyers got wind of the fraud and demanded their money back, they were intimidated into submission, Sharma said at the press conference, adding the suspects would use their photos with “influential people” in the region to help lure more buyers.
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‘Syndicate, not isolated cases’
According to sources in Bulandshahr Police, Goyal is a businessman and had the support of the district’s Sanyukt Udyog Vyapar Mandal (district manufacturers and trade association).
There was pushback from the district’s trade association when he was arrested, ThePrint has learnt.
According to these police sources, Goyal worked in close association with two other people, Neeraj Jindal, the state president of the Uttar Pradesh Sanyukt Udyog Vyapar Mandal, and Suryabhushan Mittal, alias Dabbu, editor of a local newspaper who allegedly threatened to “publish fake news” to intimidate the victims of the racket.
Their premises are believed to have been among those searched by ED Tuesday.
“Jindal helped Goyal meet politicians while Dabbu helped funnel the money generated through land dealings. The duo played a pivotal role in shaping Sudhir Goyal’s syndicate in the district,” a police officer told ThePrint.
According to police sources, the two tried to impede investigations by “threatening protests and strikes by the business community in the district whenever there was any movement in the investigation”.
At the time of his arrest, Goyal is said to have had 15 cases against him. This number eventually went up to 18 as more people came forward to register complaints, the sources said, adding that more cases be added as the investigation progresses.
“There were multiple registrations done of the same plots and in the process, Goyal and his gang members managed to orchestrate the sale and purchase of 11 illegal colonies. Now that people are coming forward with their complaints, we are getting closer to the volume of the syndicate he was running in the district,” another police officer told ThePrint.
This is an updated version of this report
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)