Ex-JNU officer dupes varsity, IIT professors of ₹11 cr.; held

Former JNU employee arrested for duping professors of ₹11 crore with false housing scheme.

A 63-year-old former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) employee was arrested for duping professors of the university and IIT Delhi of more than ₹11 crore by promising them affordable homes under the Land Pooling Policy (LPP) of the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), the police said on Wednesday.

The scheme allows landowners to pool in their land parcels, followed by roping in developers to execute housing projects, with the DDA acting as a facilitator for infrastructural developments, such as laying roads, sewage systems and other utilities. The policy aims to provide 17 lakh dwelling units for roughly 80 lakh people.

The police said P.D. Gaikwad, who worked as a scientific officer at the School of Environment Sciences, was arrested on December 14. He had in 2015 formed a fake society, they added.

Over a period of time, he convinced the professors that he was in the process of procuring land under the DDA scheme and asked them to become members of the society. The police said the accused collected money from them as a booking amount for the promised dwelling units.

“On November 1, 2015, he showed them a piece of land in L-Zone, Najafgarh. However, he did not show any document supporting the purchase of the land,” DCP (EOW) Surendra Choudary said, adding that the accused also prepared brochures with pictures of the proposed project.

In 2019, he informed the complainants that he was going to launch a different society and asked them to join it by visiting his office in JNU. The police said that the complainants subsequently wrote to Mr. Gaikwad several times seeking the return of their money, but the accused did not offer any response.

The funds collected by Mr. Gaikwad were either siphoned off through cash withdrawals or transferred to other accounts, an officer said. The police said the DDA told them it had not issued any licence or granted any approval to the society run by the accused.