The Brave Pedestrian

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...

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...

This is the story of a schoolteacher's dream of owning a home in Serenity, Powai -- a dream that turned sour. It's the story of every salaried middleclass family that had the misfortune of booking a flat with Bhagtani builders. In 2014, Bhagtani builders, going under the names of Jaycee Homes and JVPD Properties Pvt Ltd, sold flats in Serenity in a pre-launch offer before any development permissions were granted. This pre-launch featured a Building No. 1 and Building No. 2 which had A, B, C, D, A2 & A3 wings of 39 floors each. Numerous online portals such as makaan.com carried advertisements, and gave positive "feedback" about the project. The developer put up an advertisement throughout Powai region and a bridge on the Western Express Highway to lure prospective home buyers. The project was also promoted at the MCHI property exhibition held at BKC, Bandra in 2014. I am a school teacher at Podar International School, CIE, Powai, and my husband is an...

Every few days, the media reports a big judgment that makes it look like judiciary is a defender of democracy and upholder of human rights. But what goes unreported is that every single day, lakhs of undertrials and litigants, and their families, suffer needless pain, humiliation, disappointment, anxiety and mind-numbing expenditure. And exploitation by lawyers. These are the victims of judiciary. Nobody is interested in their story of unending misery. Because there is nothin g grand, colourful or decisive to report -- just human lives rendered meaningless in shades of muddy gray. For these victims of judiciary, media stories about grand judgments are surely like salt rubbed into their wounds. Like  ·  Comment  ·  Share

Monday, 9 March, 2015, Mumbai: Imagine you are enjoying dinner with your family at Golden Chariot restaurant, on the second floor of Goregaon’s  famous mall, The  Hub. Suddenly, you see smoke. No, not the delicious smoke from a sizzler, but the black, rubbery-smelling smoke from a short-circuit. An uncontrolled blaze has broken out in the building. People are shouting, “Fire! Fire!” and stampeding in panic. But you are calm. You guide your family to the nearest door that says, “FIRE EXIT”. But you are shocked to find that this door only leads to toilets and an enclosed room where drinks and junk are being stored! It does not lead to a staircase! You angrily start yelling at the Golden Chariot employees, asking where is the nearest genuine fire exit door that leads to a staircase. But nobody replies; people are running helter-skelter, the dimly-lit restaurant is filling up with thick smoke, and the temperature is rising. Photo 1: Activist Sulaiman Bhimani (right) show...