A builder who allegedly cheated customers on the pretext of selling bungalows was sentenced to 24 years simple imprisonment by the Additional District Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission at Nagpur.
The builder — Revathi Associate and Infrastructure Limited’s owner Suhas Morey – was convicted for 3 years each for contempt in total eight cases.
The jail terms will run concurrently. Terming him as a ‘white collared criminal’, a bench comprising president Sanjay Patil and members Smita Chandekar and Avinash Prabhune also slapped a collective fine of Rs3.20 lakh for all these similar cases. While asking the builder to pay Rs25,000 fine and Rs15,000 as cost to the complainants towards the contempt case in each case, the judges said he could be released from the jail if he returns the token amount taken from complainants with interest.
The applicants, including Abhijeet Kamble, Mahadeo Sakharkar, Manoj Naik, Santosh Bichare, Vinod Patil, Shashikant Landge, Narendra Shirpurkar, and Satish Gedam, had filed cases against Morey for not handing them their properties for years despite taking advance payments.
In Kamble’s case, the forum passed an order against Revati Associates on September 18, 2015, asking Morey to comply with its orders within a month. He was told to register a sale deed with the complainant for the bungalow he booked at Hingna on June 21, 2012.
If it was not possible due to technical difficulties, Morey was asked to return Rs2.76 lakh with 12% interest from the booking date. The builder was also imposed cost of Rs5,000 for mental and physical harassment to Kamble and Rs2,000 towards the litigation cost.
After the builder failed to comply with the orders, the complainant again approached the consumer court under Section 27 of the Consumer Protection Act on May 27, 2016.
The forum issued summons against the builder, but he failed to remain present. Subsequently, a non-bailable warrant was issued against him, but the police failed to execute it and the judges issued a show cause notice to them as well.
The cops finally arrested Morey on February 16, 2017, and produced him before the court. Though he confessed to the offence before the judges, he did not comply with their orders in all eight cases and absconded again. The police again arrested him and produce him before the forum on January 21, 2020.
The forum has now held him guilty under Section 27 of the Consumer Protection Act ,1986, and Section 72 of the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, in each of the eight cases having similar prayers, and sentenced him to jail for three years in each case.