No pre-arrest bail for Maple CMD

A local court in Pune on Thursday rejected the anticipatory bail application filed by Maple Group chairman and managing director (CMD) Sachin Agarwal and other executives who were booked in a cheating case as they had published misleading advertisements in newspapers promising apartments under the Centre’s Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) without the consent of the authorities.

A bench of additional sessions judge S.B. Kachare rejected the plea, which was filed by Agarwal along with Naveen Agarwal, managing director of Maple Group annd Priyanka Agarwal, sales manager, after the Pune Economic Offence Wing (EOW), opposed the plea. “We had opposed the bail application in the court and now the court has rejected the bail,” said police inspector Rajendra Mulik of EOW.

He added that the police is trying to trace the whereabouts of all the suspects.

The three executives of the Maple Group booked in the case did not turn up before the police despite notices served on them after registration of the offence.

The advertisement by Maple Group carried pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, chief minister Devendra Fadnavis and Pune guardian minister Girish Bapat, apparently to “mislead” people into believing that the project, titled Maharashtra Housing Day, was part of PMAY in which it had promised an 1 BHK apartment for Rs 5 lakh.

After the advertisement went viral, PMAY state mission director, Nirmal Deshmukh, wrote to Mhada asking it to take legal and criminal action against the developer.

The firm had also started returning money to depositors after a case was registered against them following the uproar. The police had said that around 32,000 people had booked a flat in the low-cost housing project. Maple Group in a statement released last week had apologised to the state and Central government.