The Brave Pedestrian

12th July, 2018, Mumbai: My blog criticizing the consent terms of Sapphire Welfare Association (SWA) with Bhagtanis raised a hornet's nest. Some angry people asked whether I had any solution for getting their money back. If I didn't, I should just shut up, they said. (They also said a whole bunch of other things, but let us focus on the constructive part.) Yes, since you ask, I have specific ideas about how to get your money back. My proposed method is: Cash-and-carry (CAC). If a party's credit-worthiness is zero and he is already deep in debt, trade with them on CAC terms. Stop extending credit!  What Bhagtanis want from you now is quashing of FIR and withdrawal of complaints. What you want is your money. So you should aim to get what you want at the same time as (or before) Bhagtanis what they want -- not a day later! Like they say in movies, "Ek haath se do, ek haath se lo". Shopkeepers call it cash-and-carry. Everything else can be negotiated, but f...

Mumbai, 10th May, 2018: Hundreds of cheated home-buyers of Bhagtani builders (also known as Jaycee Homes and JVPD Properties) are running from pillar to post, trying to recover lakhs and crores of rupees that they paid for booking flats. Circumstances have led most victims to believe that Diipesh, Mukesh and Lakshman Bhagtani have no money. People have become almost convinced that over Rs 450 crore collected towards Riyo, Sapphire, Serenity and Savannah projects has somehow magically vanished like water poured on desert sand. "EOW officers say that they have freezed all the accounts,  and all accounts have zero balance," say victims who are in regular touch with the police. But if this is true, then how did Bhagtani repay an SBI loan of Rs 12.40 crore in April 2018? Look at this screenshot from Ministry of Corporate Affairs (MCA) website: If you can't believe your eyes, read this Certificate of Satisfaction of Charge   issued by Ministry of Corporate Affairs. Ye...

Mumbai, 8th April, 2018: This article is relevant to all home-buyers, although it is written for the 2500-odd victims of Bhagtani builders, i.e. the people who booked flats in Bhagtani Riyo (Mira Road), Sapphire (Dahisar), Serenity (Powai) and Savannah (Kanjurmarg). Bhagtani's victims have no registered agreement of sale; they only have allotment letters that looks like this specimen . Although they have paid well over 20% of flat's consideration value, the builders have deliberately avoided the duty cast upon them by MOFA (Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act) to execute registered sale agreements. Flourishing their allotment letters and a scanty understanding of their legal position, Bhagtani's cheated flat-buyers are approaching various legal forums. Over-dependency on lawyers is making some Bhagtani victims the victims of lawyers also. Due to either mental laziness or a subconscious fear of receiving bad news, people aren't asking the right questions. Some key ...

Mumbai, 31st March, 2018: The Bhagtani family and their henchmen have in-depth understanding of the flaws in our psychology, such as (1) financial illiteracy (2) blind trust in builders (3) habitual distrust of authorities including police (4) reluctance to go to court (5) penny-wise pound-foolishness (6) tendency for needless arguments, gossip-mongering and petty politics (7) herd mentality. Bhagtanis have a decade of experience in exploiting these weaknesses and repeatedly milking the same people over and over again. Bhagtanis have unfailingly made flat-buyers sign legal paperwork that is against their own interests , and make terrible choices that make them feel good in the short run and make them poorer in the long run. Just because Mukesh and Lakshman Bhagtani are absconding and their office is closed, people wrongly believe that Bhagtanis are no longer active. A small and determined band of Bhagtani henchmen are still active, busily laying out their nets for catching the...

Mumbai, 24th March, 2018: Bhagtani Riyo victims' efforts to compel EOW to apply MPID Act got a setback last week as the special judge rejected their application. After initial disappointment, the victims' reaction was: "We must appeal!" But the question arises: Is appealing likely to be fruitful? Let us apply our mind without sentimental attachment to past decisions and actions. First, let us remember why we filed the application under MPID. Why MPID? The full name of MPID Act is "Maharashtra Protection of Interests of Depositors (in Financial Establishments) Act, 1999". It is designed to protect "depositors in financial establishments". We had three challenges: (1) People who paid Bhagtani money are not exactly "depositors". (2) JVPD Properties Pvt Ltd is not exactly a "financial establishment" (3) Section 2(c)(iv)(a) of the MPID Act explicitly excludes "advance against order for goods or services" from ...

Mumbai, 17th March, 2018: Some years ago, you gave Bhagtani lakhs of rupees in exchange for what you thought was a legally - enforceable contract . But is it a contract, or just worthless pieces of paper? Let us take a close look at your transaction. Possession, they say, is nine-tenths of the law , meaning that your ownership of something is easy to maintain if your have possession of it, and difficult when not. When your money was in your own bank account, it was entirely yours. It was your "today-money" . Then you put your money into JVPD Properties, Jaycee Homes or MD Devcon, and thereby renounced your possession and diluted your ownership of the money. In the company accounts, your money became aggregated with other people's and Bhagtani's money. It was treated by Bhagtani family as their own money, to lend or spend as they pleased, without any financial discipline. It flowed into places hard to track, such as unregistered partnerships and proprietorship ac...

Mumbai, 16th March, 2018: Yes, legal battles are tough, time-consuming, exhausting and costly. You win some and you lose some; that is the nature of the beast. Riyo victims' MPID application at sessions court was rejected on technical grounds, making it necessary for the group to approach high court. Serenity victims' RERA application seeking to have Xander declared a co-promoter appears a bit shaky; whether it will be accepted or rejected by RERA judge Kapadnis will be seen in a few days. Yes, legal battles require patience and alertness. It took 3-4 months of hard work for Riyo victims who were complainants and intervenors to put Diipesh Bhagtani in prison; he almost succeeded in fooling the judiciary, getting anticipatory bail and flying to Dubai like his father and brother. In the end, people managed to get his bail application rejected. It took group effort and enterprise, and yes, it cost the victims about Rs 10,000/- per head. Going forward, getting a high court or...

Mumbai, 1st March, 2018: Sometime today morning or afternoon, Diipesh Bhagtani will be produced before the magistrate, again, for the fourth time since he surrendered to EOW on 11th January. The magistrate may decide to keep him in judicial custody for a few more weeks, or release him on bail. We hope that the magistrate will exert pressure on Mukesh and Laxman (who are absconding) by not releasing Diipesh till they surrender... but that may be wishful thinking. Over 2,500 families who lost their life-savings, their peace of mind, their health and their dreams of owning a flat in Mumbai, are thinking only one thing day and night: "Will we get back our money? How? When?" Meanwhile, gang members and accomplices who systematically helped the Bhagtanis to loot Rs 600 crore are roaming free, because EOW hasn't named them as co-accused in the FIRs. (It's like letting Dawood Ibrahim's shooters and hit-men go free because, hey, they were only employees doing...

Mumbai, 7th January, 2018: Diipesh Bhagtani's two affidavits are like bikinis -- what they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is crucial. The two bikini affidavits in Bombay High Court are signed by Diipesh Bhagtani alone, in his individual capacity and not as a director of multiple corporate entities. This conceals dozens of important facts and connections. These affidavits give a superficial semblance of truthfulness and transparency, but the only thing that they do is misdirect your attention. Jo dikhta hai woh hai nahin , aur jo hai woh dikhta nahin hai. Got it? Download and read Diipesh Bhagtani's FIRST affidavit: http://bit.ly/2q37Dw5 This is the affidavit wherein, pursuant to the hearing held on 29th September, Diipesh, "along with other applicants", undertook to deposit Rs 22 crore in six equal installments in six months with the registrar of the high court, towards "settlement of the entire dispute" to be "paid off to th...

Mumbai, 1 January 2018: Happy New Year and welcome to 2018. Are Bombay High Court judges only incompetent, or are they also corrupt? Take a look at the Bhagtani hearings and understand why such a contemptuous question arises about Bombay High Court judges in general. In the course of the proceedings in Anticipatory Bail Application (ABA) no 1725 and 1533 of 2017, Diipesh, Mukesh and Lakshman Bhagtani have successfully exposing the infirmities of the court since mid-August 2017. Hrishikesh Mundargi, Mahesh Jethmalani, the Public Prosecutor and other "officers of the court" are abetting in this criminal activity. Although all of them passed orders that appeared strict, the overall effect of 12 hearings conducted by Justice Revati Mohite Dere, Justice A M Badar, Justice Anuja Prabhudessai and Justice AS Gadkari is to give Bhagtanis interim protection from arrest for nearly four months, without any genuine compliances. TIME is what the Bhagtanis desperately need for d...