Lavish lifestyle lands 38-yr-old bank swindler in police net

New Delhi: After cheating nationalised banks in Delhi-NCR of more than Rs 40 crore with the help of his associates, 38-year-old Amit Verma was living a plush lifestyle in European countries.

However, his days of freedom came to an end on Wednesday, after a team of the Crime Branch of Delhi Police nabbed Verma when he had come to east Delhi's Shakarpur area to check up on one of his many shell companies.

Investigators claimed that Verma had been declared a proclaimed offender in multiple cases of Central Bureau of Investigation and two cases of the Economic Offences Wing (EOW), while non-bailable warrants against him had been issued in six similar cases which pertain to financing single properties multiple times. He had evaded arrest for two years.

Police added that every two months, Verma used to changed his hideouts in India. "We noticed that he had visited Australia and European countries, where he lived a lavish lifestyle. Also in India, his some hideouts were like the rich luxury suites of different hotels and the money he used were from the banks he had cheated," said a senior police official.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Crime) Rajiv Ranjan stated that during interrogation, Verma disclosed that he and his associates Nitin Arora, Sandeep Khera, Ishita Arora and Vinod Arora would prepare forged documents of flats/plots which were already mortgaged with different Banks.

He would then take loans from Bank of Maharashtra, Sector-27 in Noida and other banks on the property.

"Later, when the gang members would not pay the loan instalments, bank officials would visit the site in question and discover that other banks have pasted their notices mentioning loan dues and the property being mortgaged with their bank. Some of the banks approached CBI, while others approached EOW," said Ranjan.

The senior officer added that the accused had taken over Rs 44 crore in loan from various banks, by mortgaging the same property multiple times.

In this regard, CBI had registered many cases, while the Delhi Police EOW had registered two.

Cops said that the gang leader Nitin Arora was nabbed by Crime Branch in 2015, in the attempt to murder cases of Sanjay Mehta and Sandeep Kheda through contract killers. Meanwhile, Nitin Arora and his wife Ishita have been in jail for about two years.

Police further claimed that Verma, along with Nitin Arora formed the gang in 2012.