The owner of Apsara and Aradhana twin cinemas in Ahmedabad has filed a police complaint against a builder who reportedly bought his cinemas for Re. 1 but sold parts thereof for Rs. 1.90 crore and pocketed the proceeds. Whether it is a land scam involving the cinema owner and the builder or, as claimed by the cinema owner, the builder fleeced him is not yet known as investigations are underway.
The cinema owner claims that he sold his property worth Rs. 2.82 crore to builder Muhammad Farooq Sheikh in 2014. Shaikh paid him just Re. 1 and promised to pay the balance amount in instalments later. The cinema owner says that builder Shaikh did not pay him any money after that, but sold parts of the property and collected a total of Rs. 1.90 crore from the buyers. He adds that despite repeated reminders, the builder has not paid him the balance amount nor returned possession of the property.
The police have registered five complaints against Shaikh under sections 420, 406, 120B, 506(2) and 114 of the IPC.