Court Rejects Bail Plea of Orbit MD Pujit Aggarwal

MUMBAI: A Sessions court in Mumbai on Thursday rejected bail application of Pujit Aggarwal, MD and CEO of real estate company Orbit Corporation in two alleged cheating cases against him. Aggarwal was arrested by Mumbai Police in September under the charges of cheating and violation of Maharashtra Ownership Flat Act, 1963.

Aggarwal was arrested in September following the complaint of a non-banking financial corporation Capri Global Advisory Services, which had invested in three flats in the developer’s project Orbit Residency Park.

Yogesh Israni, lawyer representing original complainants Capri Global Advisory Services and Capri Global Capital confirmed the development.

According to the FIR registered by the police, Aggarwal had taken a loan from LIC Housing Finance Limited for its residential project in Sakinaka by the name Orbit Residency Park. Aggarwal was supposed to deposit the proceeds of sale of the flats in an escrow account as per the agreement with LIC HFL. However, he deposited the money received from customers in his other account and allegedly siphoned off the same.

The matter came to light when LIC HFL took the possession of the project and recognised only those flat owners whose sales proceeds were deposited in the escrow account leaving other individual flat buyers in a lurch as they were not in the list released by LIC HFL.

In the second case with the EOW of Rs 52 crore, Aggarwal is accused of giving parking lot area as a security to a company representing it to be commercial premises. Aggarwal had taken a loan of Rs 52 crore from a private company in 2013 and had given security of commercial premises, a residential flat and had issued post-dated cheques in case of default as security.

However, it later transpired that the account from which he had issued the cheques was frozen by sales tax department a year before they were issued and the flat that was given as security was already in possession of a third party. The commercial premises turned out to be parking area following which the company lodged a complaint with the police.