BATHINDA: Facing 108 cases in 21 districts of Punjab and declared proclaimed offender (PO) in 92 of those, the architect in multi-crore-rupee Nature Heights Infra real-estate scam, Neeraj Thathai ‘Neeraj Arora’, was on Monday arrested from Uttarakhand after more than 8 years of being on the run.
A joint team of the Faridkot and Fazilka police found him in Pauri district of the hill state. He had disappeared with the money that people had paid him for residential and commercial plots and his arrest comes shortly after Fazilka’s Amandeep Kamboj ‘Aman Skoda’, PO in eight cases and bail jumper in 18, was captured from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh on March 15.
Faridkot range inspector general of police (IGP) Gursharan Singh Sandhu, Ferozepur range deputy inspector general (DIG) Ranjit Singh Dhillon, Faridkot senior superintendent of police Harjit Singh, and Fazilka SSP Pragya Jain on Tuesday shared with the media how the cops of both districts had teamed up to catch a most wanted criminal Pauri Garhwal region’s Srinagar area.
Police claim to have seized a luxury car, some mobile phones, and fake documents from the accused. Faridkot IG Gursharan Singh Sandhu claimed that Arora had defrauded people of plot money, and of the 108 cases against him, 47 were registered in Fazilka, eight in Ferozepur, six each in Patiala and Fatehgarh Sahib, five each in Rupnagar, Mohali, and SAS Nagar, along with four each in Faridkot, Muktsar, and Jalandhar.
The Fazilka police had arrested him even in February 2016, but he jumped bail and became a PO in February 2017. The enforcement directorate attached his properties, while the Punjab and Haryana high court in Chandigarh has many writ petitions pending against him. Ferozepur DIG Dhillon said that: “Arora used fake IDs to evade arrest. He has more than 1,200 acres of land, besides 200 flats worth more than Rs 1,000 crore in Punjab and Madhya Pradesh.
The crackdown on proclaimed offenders (POs) has given the Fazilka and Faridkot police 211 POs this year, so far, 150 to the former and 61 to the latter.
The officers have been asked to be present in the DC office in person on April 5 with their replies. The notices have been issued seeking explanation for not initiating proceedings under section 133 of the CrPC against the officers.
