13 Years After The FIR, Kabul Chawla Of BPTP Still Enjoying His Vacation…From Justice!

If you ask anyone about investment in which sector will give maximum returns in India, then the most probable answer would be ‘The Great Indian Real Estate’. Real estate is undoubtedly the most significant sector that has seen exponential growth in the decade. But as the industry grows the chances of occurrence of abnormalities also spike. This spike increases even faster if the real estate deals with India’s top 4 metro cities.

Talking about the national capital, Delhi, the metro has witnessed a myriad of fake housing scams. Sooner or later, the accused folks have always landed in the police net. However, some have the calibre of ‘Tees Maar Khan’ to such an extent that even after 13 years of the registration of the case and FIR, the accused is still absconding, with some mentioning that he fled the country then and settled abroad.

We are talking about the accused builder, Kabul Chawla, MD of BPTP (Business Park Town Planners). The first FIR was registered against the alleged firm in January 2011 for not delivering plots and flats to the homebuyers by 2012. Later, in the same year, a Delhi Court issued a non-bailable warrant against Chawla, who was accused of duping over a 1000 homebuyers in a fake housing project in Faridabad, Haryana. The cheated amount was then to the tune of Rs 400 crore.

13 Years After The FIR, Where Is Kabul Chawla Of BPTP?

The man in his initial 30s allegedly cheated people to such a level that later he was even able to purcahse a 4,050 sq.ft five-bedroom $19 million apartment in New York City. His company, BPTP, is still functional and headquartered in Gurugram, while Chawla is said to be in the US.

One may wonder what the status of the company is today. Well, it can still be seen as the one that prefers money over humans. Why are we saying such? The recent incident of July 2024, where a 5-year-old kid drowned incident, displayed the callous attitude of the company BPTP. Following the scene, the BPTP Park Serene condominium in Gurugram’s Sector 37D resonated with the slogan, ‘Kabul Chawla kaatil hai, BPTP haaye haaye.’ 

This is not only a single case where the name of Kabul Chawla has been entangled!

The person can be stated as a repeat offender. Nearly a decade of years ago, Kabul Chawla’s name was figured in a New York Times investigative article that talked about global money fueling the property boom in New York. According to the article, the investigation found that two-thirds of the 192 condos in just one complex, the Time Warner Center in New York, are owned through shell companies, one of which has links with Chawla. According to NYT, Chawla has denied owning the apartment, but the paper has found “correspondence among real estate brokers connected with the apartment’s purchase, and other sources, tying the condo to Mr. Chawla”.

It found that the apartment on floor 68 of the Time Warner Center was bought by Chawla through a shell company in February 2012 for $19.4 million. The article also highlighted that the company has not delivered many of its housing projects in India on time to home buyers.

Notably, Kabul Chawla, 44, who was born in Karnal, Haryana, is said to have powerful political connections in the state. Leaving the house in Manhattan, he also owns a house in Lutyen Delhi’s posh Amrita Shergil Marg. 

It’s annoyingly ironic how people who are trusted by civilians to build their dream homes emerge to be real estate barons who enjoy betraying people’s trust, eventually pulling down a growth sector. The real estate scene in the region suffered multiple blows as top names of the trade were stuck in scandals in the recent past, and some even found themselves in jail. This is a story of how real estate titans have played with the system, betrayed people’s trust and created multiple crises.