A 63-year-old former JNU employee was arrested for allegedly duping professors of the varsity and IIT Delhi of more than Rs 11 crore on the pretext of providing affordable housing project under the guise of DDA’s purported land-pooling policy, police said on Wednesday. The accused has been identified as P D Gaikwad, a resident of Gurugram in Haryana, they said.  An FIR was registered on the complaints of these professors.

It was alleged that in 2015, Gaikwad, who was working as a scientific officer at the university’s School of Environmental Sciences, formed the Noble Socio-Scientific Welfare Organisation (NSSWO) claiming to provide affordable housing, police said.

He allegedly made a presentation and lured them to become members of the organisation. In his capacity as the president of the organisation, Gaikwad provided them details of a proposed housing project under DDA’s purported land-pooling policy for which he said the NSSWO was in the process of procuring land in the proposed L-Zone, a senior police officer said.

The complainants became members of the NSSWO and booked units in the proposed project. The complainants paid membership fees and payments for their flats, police said. On November 1, 2015, the accused took them to show a piece of land in the L-Zone, Najafgarh. However, he did not show any document supporting the purchase of the land. Over the years, they came to realise that he was allegedly cheating them, the officer said.

In 2019, Gaikwad allegedly told the complainants that he was going to launch a different society, Siddhartha Officers Housing and Social Welfare Society, through the Delhi government and as members of the NSSWO, complainants could change their membership to the new society by visiting his office in JNU, police said.

Since 2019, the complainants were writing to Gaikwad to return their money. He has collected more than Rs 11 crore from them and misappropriated the same, police said. During investigation, complainants provided the materials/brochures and receipts issued by Gaikwad containing pictures of a housing project and depicting the said land-pooling policy, Deputy Commissioner of Police (EOW) Surendra Choudhary said.

Gaikwad had allegedly formed a society for cheating and became its president. E-mails sent by Gaikwad to the members on regular basis also contained the elements of inducement depicting the land-pooling policy of the DDA, Choudhary said.

However, during investigation, the DDA informed that it has not issued any license or granted any approval to any housing project under land-pooling policy in Dwarka or any other land-pooling zone nor authorised any developer/builder/society/ company, including the NSSWO, to offer any flat in the name of DDA under land-pooling policy, they said.

RERA (Delhi) has confirmed that the alleged society has neither registered itself with it nor applied for registration. It was revealed that Gaikwad allegedly received more than Rs 11 crore in the account of the society from its members, however, the funds were either siphoned off through cash withdrawal or transferred to other accounts, police said. The accused was arrested on December 14 from Delhi, Choudhary said.

As he was a permanent and senior official at JNU, they believed his words and became members of the society. Thereafter, he started collecting money from them in the name of purchasing the land for the project in the society’s account, Choudhary said.