The Brave Pedestrian

Mumbai, 4th October, 2018: Is the Economic Offenses Wing (EOW) of Mumbai Police deliberately going easy on Bhagtanis? Are the forensic auditors and Forensic Science Laboratory going slow? Eyebrows must rise that EOW's chargesheets of  Bhagtani Riyo and Serenity ,  filed in April and August,   are against Diipesh Bhagtani, and not against JVPD Properties Pvt Ltd and its directors Mukesh and Lakshman Bhagtani.  Download Riyo FIR & Chargesheet  Download Serenity FIR & Chargesheet Regardless of whether it is proper or improper, omission from the chargesheet gives  Mukesh and Lakshman Bhagtani extra time to continue living abroad and doing hera-pheri . As long as they are considered only suspects, and not chargesheeted offenders, they remain safe from Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, Interpol Red Corner Notices, deportation to India, police interrogation and judicial custody.  Two things that EOW cops often tell victims:  (a) The...

Mumbai, 9th September, 2018: Victims of Bhagtani Serenity are experiencing a powerful current sweeping them towards settlement with the Bhagtani builders. What the builders want is a clean chit i.e. withdrawal of criminal complaints, quashing of FIRs, and closure of proceedings under Negotiable Instruments Act. What they are offering in exchange is conveyance of Serenity project land and/or transfer of development rights in favour of "Serenity Welfare Association". Invitation to the first meeting of this association is being circulated on Whatsapp. It says: Dear All, 1st Meeting of ''SERENITY WELFARE ASSOCIATION" Expect to be held on 23 September 2018..... All Serenity  Member's (Buyers) are Requested to Attend..... Time: BTN 10:00 -11:00 AM Venue : Serenity Plot or as Decided by Member's (Buyers) Has this association been formed and registered? Has a civil case already been filed by this association? It is doubtful. But it appears that the lea...

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, 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, 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...