Ajoy Mehta’s Rs 5.33 crore Nariman Point flat and the Avinash Bhosale nexus

By Neil Terrance Haslam and Vikram Kilpady

Former Maharashtra Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta’s controversial flat worth Rs 5.33 crore in plush South Mumbai has been provisionally attached by the Income Tax Department on the grounds that it can be a benami property of Pune builder Avinash Bhosale. 

Mehta, now the adviser to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, and his ability to buy the expensive Nariman Point flat had been on the authorities’ radar for some time. The former top bureaucrat is now the chairman of MahaRERA, since February this year. MahaRERA, as is obvious, is the Maharashtra Real Estate Regulatory Authority, which monitors real estate projects in the state.

With the 1076-square-feet flat priced at Rs 5.33 crore, it was but obvious that questions will be raised. To these, Ajoy Mehta had clarified, “I have no reason to know the owner of the said property. It was a proper legal deal carried out following due procedure and I have made the payment as per the prevalent market price. I am a taxpayer and I don’t know where this is coming from.” 

Therein lies the tale. Mehta bought the flat from Anamitra Properties Private Limited, which is a private limited company incorporated on October 8, 2008.  The current address of the company is 501, Pentagon, P-3, Magarpatta City, Hadapsar, Pune Maharastra-411028. It’s being part of the Avinash Bhosale Group is shrouded in secrecy. Bhosale is a real estate tycoon with strong ties to politicians and bureaucrats in Maharashtra. 

The Avinash Bhosale Group controls Anamitra Properties Private Limited through its directors and most of these also serve as directors on Avinash Bhosale Group companies. The current and past auditors of the Company are RSVA & Co., 30 Prestige Point, 1^st floor, 283 Shukrawar Peth, Pune. The same auditors work for the other flagship companies of Avinash Bhosale.     

Within the first year of its incorporation (FY 2008-09), Anamitra Properties Private Limited received a loan of Rs 400 lakh from financial institution IndiaBulls Financial Services Limited for purchasing property 5B, 5^th floor, Samata, The Samata Co-operative Housing Society Limited, Nariman Point, Mumbai in FY 2008-09. 

The relevant extract of the Annual report for FY 2008-09 is as under:

The said loan was disclosed as unsecured loan in the next FY 2009-10. The relevant extract of the annual report of the company for FY 2009-10 is reproduced as under: 

The money received from the Rs 400 lakh loan was utilised to purchase the said property at Nariman Point. The property was leased out to other group companies of IndiaBulls viz. IndiaBulls Real Estate Limited and Lucina Land Development Limited at a whopping Rs 40 lakh. The lease was carried out just for servicing the interest on the loan and was just on paper.

The said property, which is now owned by Ajoy Mehta, has already been agreed to be sold in 2010-11 and an amount of Rs 6 crore was received by the company as interest-free advance/deposit and the said amount still continued as interest-free advance till FY 19-20 when it was sold the former Maharashtra Chief Secretary. The relevant extract of the annual report when the company disclosed this fact first time in FY 2013-14 is reproduced as under:

Further, the company sold the said property to Ajoy Mehta with the following benefits post the change in shareholding to a dubious shareholder which has already been confirmed by the IT Department as fake:

With the flat valued at Rs 5.33 crore in the market, as claimed by Mehta, the senior bureaucrat paid Rs 2.76 crore via RTGS and Rs 2.5 crore by a post-dated cheque of October 2021. This is quite something, imagine buying a flat and paying almost half its price via a PDC drawn a year later. Wow! Sweet deal, right? How I wish we all could pay our home loan EMIs like that!

This facility of installment payment post-registration of the flat is not usual, especially when a whopping Rs 6 crore has already been received as a deposit on the very same flat. 

The bonanza doesn’t end here. The seller, Anamitra Properties Private Limited, has also paid the stamp duty of Rs 10.68 lakh.

Further, some two months before the sale, the Mumbai Collector allowed Anamitra Properties to transfer the flat after it paid the fee of Rs 16.80 lakh. 

If you get the drift, Anamitra paid a stamp duty of Rs 10.68 lakh, paid a transfer fee of Rs 16.80 lakh and sold the flat for Rs 5.33 crore to Ajoy Mehta on October 8, 2020. 

All this is being done after Anamitra Properties had already received an interest-free deposit on the very same flat for 10 years amounting to Rs 6 crore. Which de facto means the flat has been waiting for the lucky recipient to be given to? 

So despite the Rs 2.76 crore paid by RTGS by Mehta, the sale of the flat doesn’t seem to be an upfront transaction between a buyer and a seller.

While the Income Tax Department has caught the nub of the matter, it still looks like a ripe case for the investigation by Central agencies into what quid pro quo has taken place between Ajoy Mehta and Anamitra Properties of the Avinash Bhosale Group. Or maybe the Tiger should take note of these shenanigans? 

IndiaLegal had sent a detailed questionnaire to Anamitra Properties for its response, there has been no reply to the email. 

The current and past directors of Anamitra Properties Private Limited is as under:

Sn	Name of the Director	Name of the Company	Remarks
	Nikhil Ketan Gokhale		Clearly, the person is a director in other group companies of Bhosle
	Vidyadhar Shridhar Mirajkar
	Rahul Parmeshwar Madhekar
	Amrish Hemchandra Rele
	Vivek Dattatray Nagarkar
	Ranjit Hanmantrao Mohite

The current and past shareholding of the company is tabulated as under: