REEL ESTATE BROKERS !!!!!!
Suburban police have busted a gang that dreamt big — of collecting commissions by forging property documents and valuing them at Rs 1,000 crore, Rs 800 crore and Rs 500 crore. The eight-member gang allegedly forged documents of college properties in Puducherry and Andhra Pradesh and tricked potential buyers into paying ‘advance commission’ between Rs 3 lakh and Rs 10 lakh. After pocketing the commission, the gang would vanish. The seven men and a woman,who used their expertise as real-estate brokers to plan the con jobs, were arrested on Wednesday.
They walked into a trap laid by M K Rajagopalan, the chairman of the Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute in Pondicherry. The gang had put the college’s 46 acres on sale for Rs 1,000 crore. The gang’s luck ran out after a potential buyer, Dr Varalakshmi of Coimbatore, called up Rajagopalan to check if the college land was on sale.
Rajagopalan, who realised that something was fishy, sought the help of Suburban Police Commissioner S R Jangid. Acting on a plan, he called up the real estate brokers to meet him, saying that he wanted to finalise the sale on Varalakshmi’s behalf. When L Venkatraman (55) from Puducherry and his seven partners arrived at a petrol bunk in Meenambakkam expecting to meet Rajagopalan, a police team, led by ACP Navneet Krishnan, arrested them.
Police said the gang had also prepared documents to ‘sell’ the entire campus of the Arignar Anna Institute of Science and Technology in Sriperumbudur for Rs 800 crore and the Anand Institute of Technology in Andhra Pradesh for Rs 500 crore. The gang members have been remanded in judicial custody. Police are trying to ascertain the number of people the gang has tricked.
