Delhi Woman Rents Out Flats Tenant Avails Loans Worth Rs 18 Crore In Her Name

It was June 2012. Fifty-five-year-old Usha Rani Sethi, a widow and a resident of East Delhi’s Vivek Vihar, was looking for tenants for her newly purchased flats in Block-D. She was contacted by two men, Sachin and Sanjay, who wanted to shift to the flats “urgently”, according to officers.

Sachin allegedly introduced himself as the owner of a metal trading company, Jagdamba Metals, and said Sanjay was his associate. “I had rented out the flat on the second-floor to Sachin for around Rs 47,000 and the smaller one on the third to Sanjay for Rs 17,000. The rent deeds were registered at the Sub-Registrar’s office. After some time, both of them left,” Usha told police.

She had almost forgotten about the two men until April 2013 when two Supreme Court advocates knocked on her door. They said she had allegedly taken a loan of Rs 70 lakh against her flats from the Punjab and Sind Bank and hadn’t paid her dues. Usha approached the police who later found loans worth a total of Rs 18 crore were availed, using her documents bearing her name, in the name of different companies for running businesses. The money was then routed through 11 shell companies and then cashed out.

“They claimed that she had transferred the sale deed (ownership) of the property to accused Sachin. He had, however, produced documents bearing Usha’s name to avail loans. She saw the documents and found there was a copy of a PAN card bearing her name, but with a different picture. The signatures were not hers either,” said a police officer.

When police officers visited the Sub-Registrar’s office, they were told that a woman, who identified herself as Usha, had visited the office in February and submitted the documents. Officers, however, learned that it was not the woman whose photo was on the PAN card.

Officers found Sachin never intended to live in Usha’s flat. He just wanted a rent agreement so they could get the details of the property and of Usha that he could use later to obtain loans, mortgages and an overdraft.

“The accused managed to source the PAN card of another Usha Rani Sethi from Odisha. This person had no connection with the complainant. They then hired another woman who went to the Sub-Registrar office impersonating Usha. The accused bypassed the document-verification mechanism at the Sub-Registrar’s office,” a senior officer said.

When the police saw the sale deed, a new name cropped up. The property had been transferred to Sachin, but loans amounting to a total of Rs 18 crore had been taken by him and his brother-in-law Sanjeev Dixit, in the name of Jagdamba Metals.

After the case went cold, a team at the EOW of Delhi Police led by Additional CP Ravi Kumar and SI Rahul started scanning the documents again and as months of investigation found that Dixit had multiple aliases.

“In 2011, Dixit was booked by the CBI in a cheating case. He was also involved in 10 other cases, including ones under the Prevention of Corruption Act registered with the CBI and the ACB,” said a police officer. In 2017, Dixit was arrested by the UP Police. He managed to escape while being escorted for production before a court. After almost a decade of hiding in cities across India, he was arrested again in January this year by the CBI and was lodged in Tihar jail.

On June 25, he was arrested again, while search for his brother-in-law Sachin is still on. Police did not confirm Sanjay’s involvement in the case.