The Supreme Court has halted criminal proceedings against Lalit Goyal, Managing Director of IREO Group, and Vikas Oberoi, Chairman and Managing Director of Oberoi Realty Limited, who face allegations of cheating, criminal breach of trust, and forgery.

A vacation bench comprising Justices PV Sanjay Kumar and Augustine George Masih has issued a notice to the Haryana government in response to a plea challenging an order from the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

"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. Issue notice to the respondents ...In the meanwhile, there shall be stay of further proceedings in relation to FIR," the bench said.

Case Brief:

The Supreme Court was reviewing a plea submitted by the IREO and Oberoi groups contesting a June 6 order from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, which had upheld the registration of an FIR. This FIR had been filed on the orders of the chief judicial magistrate at the DLF Phase 2 police station, following a complaint by Advance India Projects Limited (AIPL) alleging cheating, criminal breach of trust, and forgery.

According to the FIR, the IREO and Oberoi realty groups are accused of conspiring to defraud allottees who had invested funds since 2013, thereby deceiving both investors and the AIPL Group. AIPL's complaint alleges that the IREO Group embezzled approximately ₹1,777 crore, transferring this amount out of the country. Of this, around ₹1,376 crore was collected as advance payments from the allottees. Specifically, AIPL claimed that IREO collected ₹400 crore from about 70 allottees in the Grand Hyatt Residency Project in Sector 58, Chandigarh, as part of this scheme. The FIR also notes that the AIPL Group, which had entered into an MoU to complete the project and had made significant progress in resolving the litigation, was defrauded along with the investors.

"After various issues of IREO ended with the AIPL agreement, the company entered into an agreement with another builder, Oberoi Group, in bad faith and in violation of the terms and conditions of the agreement. Due to this, AIPL company suffered a loss of thousands of crores (of rupees)," the complainant said in the FIR.