A new scam in West Bengal , real estate is the new Saradha!!

Recently my Father-in-law called me. He was planning to buy a flat in Kolkata and a particular development was coming out on the outskirts of New Town called the Dharitri Urbania. I looked up the website and behold I was transported to a modern city with open spaces, rooftop gardens and various academies run by celebrities like a cricket academy mentored by Darren Lehmann (http://dharitri-infra.com/blog.html ).  And did I mention the prices? Well, they were eye-poppingly affordable like 11.50 lakhs for 2BHK apartments and 7 lakhs for 1 BHK apartments. In this period of literally unaffordable houses, this was too good to be true. Though this was a pre-launch offer and being endorsed by famous Bengali film actor Jeet everything looked perfect. I leave you with the sights from the project.

Dharitri Universia(Source: http://dharitri-infra.com/)

Then I went and checked some reviews on common floor .com and here take a look at the first screenshot.

Screenshot of reviews from MouthShut.com

If you read the first review and you will be impressed how much the buyer has loved his investments with a plethora of amenities and a swimming pool with people spending quality time there. I have another screenshot of comments from the same site and here it goes.

Screenshot of reviews from MouthShut.com

And a line from the review caught my eye and I quote "The Bungalow is pretty spacious and the car parking space along with the garden gives a feeling of residing in a dream house.". All good great reviews and a perfect project to invest in Right? Wrong. Because then my Father-in-Law burst the bubble. He had been to the site and it was basically kind of agricultural land with no sign of any construction activity. No sample flats, no demarcation of the land just a few tables and umbrellas with staff from the company.  Now I think it's time to look further and I checked with another site the indianrealestateforum.com . And what I came across were not too good reviews and people asking pretty basic but uncomfortable questions. And lo behold somebody from the company replied but instead of addressing the concerns started threatening them. It became very clear to me that they were paid reviews. Every good review had dwelt on the fact how great the project was and it fulfilled their dreams but in reality, there was not a single brick even put in place.


I looked up the Govt. of India Site for corporate affairs about the company and was surprised to find the company has a paid-up capital of just 5 lakhs and an authorized capital of 10 lakhs (Please refer to the document). And again when I try to check the land record and for project approval details I get no response other than visit our offices for details when a simple project approval number would have sufficed. The project approval number is issued by the Govt which basically means that the project has been approved by the Govt. I wonder is the state Govt of Trinamool Congress hand-in-hand with the developers and turning a blind eye to the scam? Because I was informed they are putting up huge billboards and big advertisements in newspapers. I would request the buyers to be careful before giving them any money and the state Govt to look into the issue so no ordinary citizen is duped of their hard earned money.