Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Sunday were granted five days custody of Hemant Sikander Jham, Director of Jham Builders and Developers, and Youvan Jivandas Gambhir (34) whom they arrested for duping over 400 investors of crores of rupees. The accused were absconding for the past two years and landed in police dragnet on Saturday.
He had constructed a road at Kanhaiya City in Wagdhara to create an impression of construction of row houses among the investors. He had opened an office at Paryawaran Nagar in Somalwada where a large number of marketing executives were recruited to run the fraudulent schemes. Sources informed that he was also making false promises of giving residential plots to the investors at a lay-out in Vathoda area.
Jham was an accused in the infamous Rs 38.75 crore Navodaya Cooperative Bank loan fraud case, Jham’s 30 acre land worth Rs 40 crore at Waghdhara in Hingna Tehsil was seized by the police allegedly for not returning Rs six crore to about 400 investors in June 2017.
An offence of cheating and criminal breach of trust was registered against Jham Builders and Developers at Sonegaon Police Station in October 2015 following a complaint lodged by Shrikant Janbandhu. The complainant was among the 418 investors who had booked flats, row houses or bungalows at Kanhaiya City, a project launched by the Jham Builders in 2010.
After some investors had moved the District Consumer Disputes Redressal Forum, about 250 summonses and warrants were issued against him but he had not appeared before it. Even an arrest warrant was also issued against him.
He was booked under Sections 406, 409, 420, 120(b), 465, 467, 468, 471, 477 (a) of the Indian Penal Code, read with Section 3 of Maharashtra Protection of Interest of Depositors Act and Sections 65, 66 (b) of Information Technology Act, has already been registered against the bank chairman, board of directors and others at Dhantoli Police Station.
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