Mumbai, Jan 28 (IANS): A court here on Thursday sent Omkar Group Chairman Kamal Kishore Gupta and Managing Director Babulal Verma into Enforcement Directorate custody till January 30 in connection with a money laundering probe.

The ED arrested Gupta and Verma on Wednesday under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act after questioning them for over five hours and produced before the Special PMLA court here.

The ED has registered a case on the basis of the FIR registered by Maharashtra Police against promoters of Omkar Group. The FIR alleged that Omkar Realtors and Developers Pvt Ltd and its directors bought a firm named Surana Construction which had Slum Rehabilitation Authority rights for redevelopment of Anand Nagar SRA Cooperative Housing Society in Mumbai's Wadala.

However, Omkar Group and its promoters did not pay back the amount due to seller and also mortgaged future FSI of the said SRA project and took huge amounts of loans.

The ED official said that during probe, it was found that the loans to the tune of Rs 410 crore were diverted and not used for intended purposes.

"No work of SRA building was undertaken. The requisite rules and procedures under SRA were ignored by the accused and documents relating to names of slumdwellers were forged to claim more FSI for mortgaging the same with banks for taking the loans," the official said.

The ED official said that the agency had carried out searches on Monday at 11 premises including residential and office premises of key persons.

"During searches incriminating documents including digital evidences have been found and seized. Varma and Gupta were arrested for their involvement in the offence of money laundering," he said.