Duped NRI investors cry for justice in Kerala villa scam

Dubai - 70 UAE residents among 272 affected investors in the stalled project after investing Rs3.5m to Rs5.5m.

All they wanted was a peaceful retirement life when they invested in a luxury villa project at a temple town in Kerala six years back.
But a group of expats from the south Indian state living in the UAE are now waging a legal battle seeking justice in the villa scam from the High Court of the Indian state and the Ministry of External Affairs.
Some 70 UAE residents are among the 272 affected investors in the project of Santhimadom Builders and Developers in the pilgrimage town of Guruvayur where the country's fourth largest temple in terms of the number of daily visitors is located.
More than 20 of the affected investors in the UAE held a press conference on Saturday to announce their decision to move the Kerala High Court to solve the crisis over the stalled project for which they had invested Rs3.5m to Rs5.5m since 2008.
The controversy over the project in the Munimada area started when the construction was stalled in 2010.
The developers said the local government had stopped construction after the Archeological Department objected to the project in the vicinity of an ancient cave protected by the department.
The investors alleged that the developers had purposefully encroached on the archeological land for a total cessation of the project, which had lured investors with very attractive features, ranging from a swimming pool and shopping complexes to a helipad, health resort, and herbal plantation.
The investors said the project also had other baits to get the full payment at the earliest including Rs25,000 rent even from the unfinished villas from the very next month after they make the full payment. Another offer was a gift land of five acres of herbal plantation in Tamil Nadu's Madhura.
While the rental paid initially to some of the investors eventually stopped, those who got title deeds for the gift land have been served legal notices for land grabbing.
The investors said the extensive media and advertising campaigns using prominent actors as brand ambassadors had helped the builders earn their trust. The chairman of the group, against whom there were other cases as well, had been jailed multiple times after the Kerala-based investors filed cases in this project as well.
However, the investors alleged that he had used his influence to go free and filed false details about his assets before a local court seeking insolvency.
Dubai-based advocate Shamsudheen Karunagappally, who is representing 22 affected investors from the UAE, said the group is now moving the High Court within two weeks making the local administrative body, town planning department, the archeological department along with the builders as respondents.
"The government bodies should not have given permission to the project first and then stopped it later," he said.
"We are also meeting the Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj to seek her support for these NRIs in convincing the archeological department that the project will not affect the protected caves. They had allowed many other buildings and roads in the vicinity of the protected site and only stayed this project," he reasoned.
sajila@khaleejtimes.com

• UAE