Bail cancelled, actor accused in property scam arrested

Actor Disha Choudhary, a prime suspect in the multi-core property scam that rocked Bengaluru a few years ago, has been arrested from Mumbai where she had been allegedly hiding after a court cancelled her bail. 

Disha  Choudhary, her husband Sachin Naik and another man named Anoop were arrested in April 2017 in connection with the Rs 1,500-crore scam involving dubious property firms such as Dreamz Infra India Private Limited, TGS Construction Private Limited and Gruha Kalyan Private Limited. 

The companies advertised 48 real estate projects in the city but failed to deliver them after taking payments from the public. A staggering 82 cases were registered against them in various police stations for "duping" 3,700-odd investors. The cases were later assigned to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) which filed a charge sheet against Choudhary, Naik, Mandeep Kaur and other eight others. 

A senior officer in the CID said Choudhary had got bail after promising to cooperate in the investigation. But she kept changing her residential address and failed to appear for trial. The court cancelled her bail and issued more than 35 warrants and 10 summons, ordering her to appear before it but she was absconding. 

A special team of the CID's economic offences wing went to Mumbai last week after learning that she was hiding there. The sleuths arrested her on November 24. She was produced before the principal city civil and sessions court judge in Bengaluru on Monday and remanded in judicial custody. 

Choudhary acted in a 2014 Hindi film 'Anuradha' which tanked at the box office.