TRIVENI INFRASTRUCTURE DEVELOPMENT CO. LTD. Vs. STATE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THE petitioner Company is into the business of development of real estate. It claims that during the years 2006 -07 it had invited bookings for allotment of flats and plots in their projects in different cities after having obtained necessary licences and other clearances from the concerned Government departments. Thousands of persons invested money with the petitioner Company in the hope of getting flats/plots. The petitioner Company claims that due to global economic recession speculative investors suddenly started cancelling their bookings and refund was being claimed from the petitioner Company as they did not expect profit any more from the bookings and in order to pressurize the Company to pay them the money some of the investors converted the dispute of refund of money, which was purely a civil dispute, into a criminal case of cheating by lodging a complaint with the Economic Offences Wing(EOW) of the Delhi Police on 24th December, 2008 and on the basis of that complaint FIR 234/08 was registered.

(2.) DURING the investigation, the police vide order dated 20th November, 2009 attached immovable properties of the petitioner Company as well as of its Group Companies. That order was passed during the pendency of anticipatory bail application of three Directors of the petitioner Company in which this Court had stayed their arrest.(That application is also being disposed of today by a separate order). It is being claimed by the petitioner that it never had any intentions to cheat any of its valuable investors and, in fact, some speculative investors had started asking for refund of their money because of global recession due to which they did not expect profit any more from the bookings done by them with the petitioner Company for the allotment of flats/plots. Since the attachment order dated 20th November, 2009 had the impact of bringing the entire business activities of the petitioner Company to a halt the present writ petition was filed for quashing of that order of passed by the Assistant Commissioner of Police(EOW).

(3.) THE petitioner is for the time being claiming partial lifting of the embargo on the sale of two pieces of land only as well defreezing of its bank accounts, which have also been freezed by the police during the pendency of this petition, to enable it to carry on its construction activities and to honour its commitments with thousands of investors who are still willing to have flats/plots from the petitioner Company despite the registration of case of cheating against it at the instance of only a handful of the investors.