ED arrests Director of Jharkhand firm for duping investors

New Delhi, Mar 16 () The ED has arrested the Director of a Jharkhand-based company for allegedly duping a number of investors of their hard-earned money by fraudulently offering them plots of land in the state, the agency said on Monday.

Shyam Kishore Gupta, director of Ranchi-based Sanjeevani Builcom Pvt Ltd, has been arrested last week under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in a case relating to cheating of investors by offering them plots of land, it said.

"The accused has induced the gullible investors to deposit money with the accused company for purchase of plots of land and subsequently this money was siphoned off," the Enforcement Directorate (ED) said in a statement.

The ED, a central probe agency, alleged that its probe conducted so far shows that Gupta, along with managing director of the company Jayanti Dayal Nandi and others, "fraudulently" lured a large number of persons by inducing them to purchase plots in Jharkhand.

"Deposits to the tune of about Rs 80 crore were received from these investors but possession of plots and flats was not given to them. The money received from investors was deposited into the bank accounts of the company and its directors," it claimed.

Gupta and others used the investors' money to create various movable and immovable assets in their "own" names, the ED charged.

The ED took over probe in the case after studying a 2014 CBI FIR and a subsequent charge sheet against the accused firm and its executives. NES NES SMNSMN