NEW DELHI: The Delhi Police on Tuesday claimed to have arrested a 38-year-old builder in connection with alleged cheating of 485 flat buyers to the tune of over Rs 300 crore in Gurugram, officials said. Varun Puri was wanted in at least 45 cases of cheating and was facing the reward of Rs 1 lakh for his arrest. A court had declared him proclaimed offender in a case of cheating, they said.
According to a senior police officer, Puri was arrested from Madhya Pradesh’s Indore on October 25 and was further interrogated by the Delhi Police Special Cell.
The officer said Universal Buildwell Private Limited launched a project in the name of Universal Aura at Sector-92 in Gurugram and promised the buyers to provide flats by the year 2010.
The owners of the company — Varun, his brother Vikram and their father Raman — collected more than Rs 300 crore from 485 home buyers.
“The company did not provide the flats even after passage of considerable time. Accordingly, the buyers lodged various cases against the directors of the company at various police stations across Delhi-NCR.
“Five cases were also registered at Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW)… Keeping in view the sensitivity of the case, the Delhi Police declared a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh each, on the arrest of Varun Puri, Vikram Puri and Raman Puri,” he said.
A team led by inspectors Manender Singh, Neeraj Kumar and Sundeep Yadav under the supervision of ACP Sanjay Dutt gathered inputs regarding Varun, who was staying in Indore.
Sources were deployed in Indore and manual surveillance was mounted on Varun’s possible hideouts. On October 25, he was apprehended from a house on MB Road in Indore.
In 2005, Varun along with his brother Vikram Puri and father Raman Puri started a construction firm in the name of Universal Buildwell Private Limited and started working as one of the directors in the company. Their company started constructing flats and commercial properties in Delhi-NCR area.
