Number of duped investors in realty on rise in Odisha

One can see lots of residential and commercial towers everywhere these days in the state capital. With a dream to have a house in Bhubaneswar, in particular, many people put their life’s savings into buying a home without researching in advance about the builder’s credentials.  What’s more, the rates are so high that a person ends up exhausting their life’s entire savings to purchase one flat. Taking advantage of this, builders dupe unsuspecting buyers of their hard-earned money. 

The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Crime Branch arrested two directors of a Nayapalli-based real estate company Odyssa Home & Commercials Pvt Ltd on charges of cheating 50 flat buyers to the tune of Rs 20 crore on the pretext of providing them dispute-free flats in its apartment. EOW has launched a search operation to nab two more directors who are absconding. 
The matter surfaced after Ranjan Kumar Pradhan knocked on the door of EOW after being duped by the realty farm owners.
Ranjan had booked a 3BHK flat at a cost of Rs 65 lakh. Though six years elapsed to the booking, Odyssa Homes & Commercials Pvt Ltd is yet to hand over a flat. His pleas to return his money went in vain.
 The realty farm also runs another project at Shyampur near Kalinga Studio. Project directors Manoj Panda, Saroj Panda and its director Arabinda Santara  are alleged to have duped 50 investors between 2013 and 2016 and collected Rs 20 crore from them. Not a single investor has got a flat so far. 
Besides, it is alleged that the realty farms have sold one flat to seven individuals. They have duped customers on the pretext of providing them flats at Sahid Nagar and Khandagiri by taking Rs 60-70 lakh from each.
Moreover, these realty projects got loans from reputed nationalised and private banks for which customers never doubted their operations.
Meanwhile, a person identified as Raghunath Padhi in a tweet to Police DG informed that Biju Janata Dal leader and former minister Rabi Narayan Nanda is operating this realty farm.
Nanda, on the other hand, termed those allegations baseless saying “Many people target me and make such statement due to political enmity. Action must be taken against such realty farm.”