Goa police nabs man for duping money from shell company

The director of a shell firm has been arrested here for allegedly illegally diverting money of property buyers from the main company and using it to purchase land in Goa, police said Tuesday. The 20-something Aditya Goyal was arrested on Monday and has been booked under Indian Penal Code sections 420 (fraud), 406 (criminal breach of trust), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc), 506 (criminal intimidation), and related offences, they said.

Aditya's father, Awadhesh Goyal, a director of Earth Infrastructure, is already behind bars in the two-year-old case in which an FIR was registered at Sector 20 police station in Noida on a complaint by a Meerut-based buyer. Police said the fund was allegedly diverted in connivance with two individuals -- Mukul Garg and Ratan Vijay -- who together floated around 10 firms to illegally divert the money of buyers from the Earth Iconic Infrastructures and Earth Infrastructure.

They further transferred it into 100s of other "front companies" headed by wives and other relatives of the directors of the two main firms, said Sector 20 station house officer Rajveer Singh Chauhan. Garg, the director of Fincap Private Limited, was arrested by the crime branch in November last year. His associate Vijay is absconding and searches are underway to nab him, Chauhan said.

"The money of buyers was used by the directors of these front companies to buy properties like land, bungalows, farmhouses and shops," the SHO said. "Goyal, son of Awadhesh Goyal, was the director of one such front company and accused of using this ill-gotten money from Earth Infrastructure to buy a 1,800 sq yard plot in Goa, among others," Chauhan said. The case is under investigation by the Crime Branch and the police said more arrests are likely soon.

(With inputs from agencies.)