Supreme Court stays criminal case against MDs of IREO, Oberoi Realty

The Supreme Court recently stayed criminal proceedings against the Managing Directors (MDs) of realty companies, Ireo and Oberoi Realty [M/S Ireo Residences Company vs State of Haryana and anr].A Vacation Bench of Justices PV Sanjay Kumar and Augustine George Masih sought the response of the Haryana government in the matter, after noting that the criminal case's validity needs to be examined."The question as to whether the filing of the second complaint would amount to an abuse of process and as to whether the complainant approached the Court with unclean hands requires further examination ... In the meanwhile, there shall be stay of further proceedings", the Court stated on June 14..The Court has listed the matter next on July 9. The case against Ireo Group MD Lalit Goyal and Oberoi MD Vikas Oberoi, concerns offences of cheating, criminal breach of trust and forgery.The two companies moved the Supreme Court in appeals against a June 6 Punjab and Haryana High Court order that upheld the registration of a first information report (FIR).They stated that the complainant had not mentioned that a similar complaint was filed earlier to no avail earlier.The FIR was filed pursuant to a directive from a Gurugram Chief Judicial Magistrate after the realty companies were accused of conspiring to defraud the allottees of a housing project in the city. It was alleged that the two realty companies embezzled around ₹1,777 crores, the complaint added..Senior Advocate Vikram Chaudhri with Advocates Nikhil Jain, Abhimanyu Bhandari, Arshdeep Khurana, Rishi Sehgal, Hargun Sandhu, Arveen Sekhon, Nikita Gill, Muskaan Khurana, and Divya Jain appeared for Ireo Grace.Senior Advocates Mukul Rohatgi and Vinod Ghai with Advocates Gautam Narayan, Nikhil Rohatgi, Shashank Khurana, Krishna Balaji Moorthy, Arnav Ghai, Apoorva Kaushik, Uday Mathur, and Pranaya Goyal appeared for the Oberoi group. Senior Advocates Dr. Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Dama Seshahdri Naidu, and Randeep Rai, with Advocates Avishkar Singhvi, Yash Johri, Shivashish Dwivedi, Devna Soni, Yashi Bajpai, Aditya Bhatt, Vineet Maheshwari, Sandeep Verma, Siddhant Sharma, Rubina Virmani, Jatin Sehgal, Adhirath Singh, Ashish Garg, Payal Singh, Manav Mitra, Sandeep Verma, and Vineet Maheshwari appeared for the complainants, the authorised representatives of Advance India Projects..Supreme Court closes contempt of court cases against NCDRC members.[Read order]