Rental Accommodation - Fraud-accused Ibrahim Sheriff Absconding with Rs 3 Crore
Pics: Dayananda Kukkaje
Daijiworld Media Network – (PS/SB)
Mangalore, Nov 3: In a major fraud case in the City, tenants of a particular apartment have accused one Ibrahim Sheriff, a resident of Harmony Apartments located near Attavar, of cheating them. He has been accused of absconding after cheating people of hefty amount of Rs 3 crore 6 lac.
Under the leadership of Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) Dakshina Kannada District Committee, all the victims submitted their complaints to Seemanth Kumar Singh, police commissioner on Wednesday Nov 3.
The commissioner took the documents pertaining to their agreements with Ibrahim Sheriff. The victims also brought to the commissioner that they have already registered a FIR in Kankanady police station a few days back.
It is learnt that Ibrahim Sheriff, posing as a real estate broker contacted those who were in search of houses for rents. He made the tenants believe him and hatched a plot under which he collected a hefty amount of money as deposits. As per the agreement he was suppose to pay their monthly rent to the flat owner. However, suddenly one day he stopped paying the above said rent amount and this came to light only when the owner claimed that the rent money is due from Shariff from past six months. The hapless victims then got the clear message that something is amiss when an eviction notice showed up at the door.
In the backdrop of increasing prices of flats and houses in the city these daya, as many as hundreds of tenants have been made scapegoats in the incident. Many among them have lost the money earned through out their lifetime and are rendered on the streets now. Even the owners of the flats are in no mood to listening to the tenants' grievances.
Sheriff is missing with his family since Oct 5 2010. Some victims suspect that he is in Dubai now, while others said he is in hiding within the country.
Sheik Mohammed, retired principal of Beary College, Kundapur one of the victims said that when he asked the deposit money from Sheriff after developing suspicion on him, he assured of repaying the money and when he deposited two cheques of Rs 5 lakh each to the bank given by Sherrif, they bounced.
All this has happened because of the recent cancellation of rental act. And now there is no particular act which regulated the rent amount, says Muneer Katipalla, president of DYFI, D K District Committee. It is not only Ibrahim Sheriff, but there are others engaged in the similar fraudulent acts, who are yet to be traced, he added.