Dahisar Police have arrested a broker for allegedly cheating a chartered accountant of nearly ₹29 lakh by posting a fake advertisement for the sale of a flat on a website. The arrested accused has been identified as Deepak Shah. Police said Shah is currently in judicial custody in another case involving a similar offence.
Investigations have revealed the involvement of two more accused — Aditya and Rajesh Jain — who have been named as co-accused in the case. Both are currently absconding, and police have launched a search operation to trace them.
The complainant, Hitesh Gondvilya, a resident of Dahisar, works as a chartered accountant. As he was living in a rented flat, he was looking to invest in a residential property. During his search, he came across an online advertisement for the sale of a flat located at Rawalpada, Gavde Nagar, N.L. Krishna Society in Dahisar. The advertised price of the flat was ₹1.05 crore, following which Gondvilya contacted the mobile number mentioned in the advertisement.
An agent named Aditya later called Gondvilya and asked him to visit the society at Rawalpada to inspect the flat. Accordingly, Gondvilya visited the flat along with his father Mansukh on August 23, 2025. After liking the flat, he agreed to proceed with the deal. Aditya then introduced him to Deepak Shah and Rajesh Jain, claiming that Jain was the owner of the flat while Shah was the broker handling the transaction.
Gondvilya agreed to arrange a loan of ₹80 lakh and pay the remaining amount in cash. Subsequently, he paid ₹29.55 lakh to the accused. However, when it came to registering the flat, the trio began avoiding him, citing various reasons and repeatedly postponing the registration.
Suspecting foul play, Gondvilya visited the tehsil office to verify the ownership details of the flat. He then discovered that the flat belonged to another person and that the accused had allegedly forged documents by replacing the original owner’s photograph with their own, falsely projecting Rajesh Jain as the owner and carrying out the fraudulent transaction.
After the fraud came to light, Gondvilya approached Dahisar Police and lodged a complaint against all three accused. Based on the complaint, police registered a case against Deepak Shah, Rajesh Jain and Aditya for cheating and forging documents to fraudulently carry out a flat sale transaction and dupe the complainant of ₹29.55 lakh.
While Shah has been arrested in the case, police said efforts are on to trace and arrest the remaining two absconding accused.