Bhubaneswar, Jul 20 (IANS): The Odisha Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Thursday arrested an additional director of a real estate firm for his alleged involvement in a cheating Rs15 crore cheating case.

The accused is Santosh Kumar Rath, additional director of real estate company Mishra Creations Pvt. Ltd., who cheated investors to provide them with flats in the project in his project ‘Utopia’ at Chandaka, in the outskirts of Bhubaneswar.

Earlier, Jyoti Ranjan Mishra, managing director of the same real estate company, was arrested in the case registered on the basis of a complainant by Swadesh Ray Chaudhury.

Mishra is still in judicial custody.

The duo had cheated Swadesh as well as other investors in the name of giving flats in the ‘Utopia’ project, EOW officials said.

Santosh Rath was initially looking after the marketing of the Utopia project. Later on, he was appointed as the additional director of the company.

He along with Mishra collected more than Rs.15 crore from more than 130 investors from 2016 onwards to provide them with apartments.

As per agreement, the flats were to be handed over within 30 months.

But till date, neither the real estate firm handed over him the flat nor he was refunded the invested amount even after the elapse of 8 years, the officials said.

The EOW also found that Santosh and Mishra also conducted multiple transactions in respect of a good number of flats booked earlier in the name of different investors.