Unitech promoter seeks bail for 3 months to settle buyers’ dues

NEW DELHI: Sanjay Chandra, the promoter of developer Unitech Ltd jailed in a cheating case, urged the Supreme Court to release him on bail for three months to mop up funds to pay back flat buyers, promising to even sell his house to help clear dues. Chandra will sell his “own house and pay everybody” and wants to “settle with everyone,” his lawyer Abhimanyu Bhandari told a bench led by Chief Justice-designate Dipak Misra.

The lawyer said several flat buyers had filed refund claims with the company and Chandra needed to be out to arrange the funds. Chandra and his brother Ajay Chandra, both managing directors of Unitech, were sent to jail last week in connection with a cheating case registered against them by flat-owners in a Gurgaon project. A lower court had granted them interim bail for three months in April and declined to extend it.

The high court also refused to grant them any relief, prompting Sanjay Chandra to move the top court. If Chandra remains in judicial custody, the company will collapse. He needs to be out of jail to arrange the money by selling assets, Bhandari told the apex court on Wednesday. Urging the court to set him free conditionally for three months, the lawyer said Chandra is not asking for regular bail and based on his conduct, the court could decide whether he should remain outside. He said 152 investors had filed a complaint with Delhi Police’s economic offences wing.

The company had settled the claims of 62 of them. The principal amount yet to be paid in the case was Rs 35 crore. However, the bench was not impressed. “This (tone) changes when an investor goes to your office (for refund). This is the reality and we are speaking out of experience,” Justice Amitava Roy observed. Instead, the bench, also comprising Justice AM Khanwilkar, sought a report from Delhi Police on the number of people who had filed complaints against the real estate company, which is now facing financial hardship.



A case was registered against the company and its promoters on July 31, following an order passed by the Delhi High Court on July 27, 2015. The High Court order came on a petition filed by two Delhi residents who alleged they had been persuaded to book flats in August 2011 in Unitech’s residential project Wild Flowers Country in Gurgaon for Rs 57.34 lakh. They were later joined by other buyers who didn’t get the flats. On investigation, police said Unitech had collected about Rs 363 crore from the project.