Ex-chief of pharma firm held for selling mortgaged property

NEW DELHI: The Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police arrested Bhai Manjit Singh, a former director of a pharmaceutical firm for allegedly cheating a senior official of an infrastructure firm by selling him a mortgaged property.

Police said that Singh was booked for cheating and sent to 14-day judicial custody.

Confirming the arrest, additional commissioner (EOW) Subhashish Choudhary said, “We have initiated a probe into some others allegations of cheating and fraud against him and will frame the charges accordingly.”

Officers said they had received a complaint from Ashok Gupta, who alleged that had sold his house on Prithwiraj Road to Gupta. The sale price was fixed at Rs 245 crore and Singh told Gupta to pay Rs 4.3 crore to take possession. However, after Gupta cleared the payment and tried to transfer the ownership, he found that the house had been mortgaged to a government bank.

Gupta said that he then approached Singh and asked him to return the money, but he refused to do so. Police said Singh refused to join the probe despite getting notices. Following this, a team from EOW arrested him on Wednesday afternoon.