DLF Camellias, Lutyens’ bungalow: How Delhi’s elite fell for a scam

He allegedly tried to sell the bungalow to realtor Sonakshi Bansal, daughter of Unity Group co-founder and director Krishna Kumar Agrawal, claiming that it had been seized by SBI and would be sold through a bank auction for around Rs 75 crore.

Police said the claim was backed by forged documents, making the property the centrepiece of an alleged Rs 200-crore property fraud.

Gogia’s victims, police claimed, were not first-time buyers but seasoned real estate developers who coveted premium properties like No. 9, Amrita Shergill Marg DLF Camellias and Magnolias in Gurgaon.

Over the last several months, Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) arrested six people involved in the alleged fraud, including Gogia, his wife Shweta and businessman Abhinav Pathak.

The beginning

On a humid August afternoon in 2024, Bansal met Gogia at her Black Teak Realty real estate advisory firm. Gogia had come to her office on the fifth floor of Agrawal Towers — an eight-storey red-brick building in Central Delhi’s Rajendra Nagar — with Pathak, a family friend and the proprietor of the Delhi-based Abhinav Biotech.

“He asked if he could buy a penthouse in one of our developments, and told us he was a real estate dealer, and along with his wife Shweta Gogia, ran a firm called MG Leasing and Finance… He also told us that he is looking for partners to ‘develop’ (as a joint venture) a parcel of land he had in Gurgaon’s Sector 63,” Bansal said in her statement to the police.

Gogia allegedly said his company was authorised under the 2002 Securitisation and Reconstruction of Financial Assets and Enforcement of Security Interest (SARFAESI) Act to sell properties that banks confiscate from loan defaulters.

As  Gogia started frequenting the Agrawals’ office in Rajendra Nagar to discuss the Gurgaon land deal, the family decided to verify his background.

They found that he owned a whole floor with lavish interiors in an upscale locality of Patel Nagar, and a Lamborghini sports car. He also owned the Obello chain of luxury salons in Delhi and was hailed as an up-and-coming entrepreneur of the “luxury and auction market” in an article in a leading Indian publication on June 20, 2025, said police.

In September 2024, Gogia made what police said was his biggest gambit.

According to Bansal’s complaint, Gogia overheard Krishna Kumar Agrawal saying his family was thinking of buying a house in Vasant Vihar and offered him the even more exclusive address at the heart of Lutyens’ — 9, Amrita Shergill Marg.

By then, police said, months of meetings over the proposed Gurgaon joint venture had taken place. Gogia had become a familiar face at the Agrawals’ office.

“He informed my father about a property at No. 9, Amrita Shergill Marg, Lodhi Estate and assured it will be made available through SBI under an auction at about Rs 75 crore,” Bansal said in her complaint, now part of the FIR. “I, along with my husband, father and brother visited the site and noted that there were two properties 9 and 9A Amrita Shergill Marg… Mohit Gogia clarified that both properties would be made available together.”

A bungalow on Amrita Shergill Marg can cost up to Rs 100 crore. But Gogia, police said, claimed that the property, along with the adjoining 9A, would cost Rs 75 crore — three-quarters of the price of one. He allegedly assured the family that he had access to the bank’s auction process and could secure the property before it reached the open market.

Bansal allegedly told police that a security guard at the property told her that the property was with SBI.

A source in the police, however, said that SBI never listed the property for auction. “The SBI confirmed to us that it had never listed the bungalow for auction, but it had been mortgaged as collateral for a third-party loan,” the source added.

Bansal told police that by October 2024, she had paid Rs 43 crore of the Rs 75 crore. For the remaining amount, she was told she could get a loan from SBI.

Simultaneously, Gogia allegedly promised to sell the developed Sector 63 Gurgaon plot to Bansal’s cousin and business partner, Mrinal Mittal, for Rs 60 crore.

Police alleged the two transactions together accounted for around Rs 135 crore, making them the largest among the cases currently being probed by the EOW.

A woman paid Mohit Gogia Rs 12.5 crore after being promised an apartment in Gurgaon’s upscale DLF Camellias. (Photo Credit: Renuka Puri)

The delay

Gogia’s promises soon gave way to excuses, said police.

According to Bansal’s complaint, Gogia first blamed income tax raids in November 2024. “He told us to be patient,” Bansal said in her complaint, adding that Gogia then promised to hand over possession of the two Amrita Shergill Marg properties by March 2025.

But two months later, Bansal was still awaiting possession. Gogia allegedly claimed the property could not be released because of an outstanding second mortgage of Rs 1.3 crore. According to the complaint, Bansal issued another cheque to clear the amount.

She was then allegedly given what Gogia claimed were property papers and house keys. However, Bansal still did not get possession of the properties. When the family confronted Gogia in May, he allegedly handed them post-dated cheques for the money that Bansal had paid, telling them to encash the cheques if they did not get possession by the end of the month.

The cheques allegedly bounced. In June 2025, the family approached Delhi Police. The case was later transferred to the EOW.

No. 9, Amrita Shergill Marg

Nestled side-by-side on a particularly verdant stretch of Amrita Shergill Marg and separated only by a shared boundary wall, bungalows 9 and 9A are like many other old Central Delhi houses — multi-storeyed homes lying almost entirely covered by lush neem and gulmohar trees.

Bungalow No. 9 — the first property offered to Bansal — lies vacant. But 9A bears unmistakable signs of occupation, from a nameplate to the SUVs parked outside.

“The owner passed away a few years ago. His wife, daughter and other family members live here now,” said Shambhu, a security guard posted outside.

A woman, who identified herself as the owner’s daughter, denied knowing anything about the sale of the property. “These bungalows have been in my family for years,” she said.

6 B, Rajendra Nagar, accused Mohit Gogia’s last known address. (Photo Credit: Pragynesh)

The victims

By the time the two Unity Group FIRs reached the EOW, investigators were already probing other cases against Gogia.

What they allegedly did not know was the scale of the operation, with investigators finding at least 12 cases against Gogia across India. One of Gogia’s victims was Braham Singh Tanwar.

The 56-year-old real estate dealer from Mehrauli first met Gogia in May 2024 while trying to buy a second-hand luxury car.

“He came to meet me in a black Mercedes Maybach, and took me to his salon in Rajender Nagar, where some Range Rovers and BMW 7 Series were parked. After we wrapped up a deal for some Fortuners, he offered to sell me a land parcel in Gurgaon and a flat in DLF Magnolias for Rs 31 crore,” Tanwar said.

One of Gurgaon’s most luxurious apartment complexes, a flat at DLF Magnolias typically costs between Rs 42 and Rs 85 crore. For Tanwar, Rs 31 crore seemed like a bargain.

Gogia’s paperwork looked impeccable, Tanwar said, with bank letterheads, ‘bank confirmations’ and authentic-looking barcodes that would take clients to what seemed like a bank website.

Another alleged victim was a woman who paid Gogia Rs 12.5 crore after being promised an apartment in Gurgaon’s super-luxury residential property, DLF Camellias. On November 22, last year, Gogia was arrested in the case.

“Further, we got to know that he had once almost sold the Ambience Mall, Gurgaon, to someone for something close to Rs 180 crore,” said an officer.

Police said that as per Pathak, Gogia had initially attempted to sell the mall to him. “When a case was registered against Pathak and Gogia by EOW, Pathak filed a counter complaint alleging that Gogia had told him that he is buying the mall for Rs 500 crore and that Pathak could have a share in it,” said an officer. “It was extraordinary… the best of lawyers, the richest of families, were being taken for a ride by a college dropout,” the officer added.

The backstory

Gogia was born in 1987 in South Delhi’s Malviya Nagar to a businessman father and a homemaker mother. One of two siblings, he dropped out of college in the second year and joined a private firm, where he met his now-wife Shweta, with whom he has two children.

In 2012, he started a financial services company and expanded into buying and selling second-hand cars before opening MG Finance and Leasing in 2016. In his disclosure statement, he mentioned owning restaurants and clubs in Delhi, Mumbai and Bhopal.

His last known address is 6 B Rajendra Nagar — a house just 7 km from the Amrita Shergill Marg bungalow. A typical Delhi Richie loft, it occupies the third floor of a building every bit as ostentatious as the realtor: boxy with a classical façade, ornate wrought-iron railings along its elongated balconies, and decorative vertical columns on its walls.

“I had never seen one person with so many cars,” said Krishna Kumar Singh, a security guard at the Rajendra Nagar building. “Luxury cars kept coming and going.”

The probe

His arrest last November was not Gogia’s first brush with the law. He was first arrested two months earlier in an alleged  cheating case involving 181 acres in Punjab’s Zirakpur, but was eventually released on bail. Investigators alleged he went on the run anticipating another arrest.

After Gogia, four others, including Pathak, were arrested. All of them are currently in judicial custody.

Police said they are investigating the role of Ram Singh (49), a “strongman” financier from West Delhi who could even be the mastermind.

A Class 8 dropout, Ram Singh started Baba Ji Finance, a private lending firm in Subhash Nagar that offers unorganised loans and dabbles in property brokerage, with his wife in 2005.

According to his disclosure report, he has only one employee. Yet all the accused, including Gogia, have allegedly identified him as their boss.

In his disclosure statements, Gogia alleged that he first met Ram Singh in 2022 and parked his money with Baba Ji Finance for high returns. “In July-August 2023, Ram Singh suggested that we should collect a large amount of money from the market,” Gogia allegedly told police. “We planned to collect advance money on the pretext of selling disputed and mortgaged properties.”

While Gogia would identify seized properties from publicly available bank records, scout for potential targets and forge documents, others would help procure mule accounts. For his alleged role, Gogia would secure 30% of the cheated sum.

“If anyone filed a police complaint or court case against us, we would identify a new party and use their money to repay the complainant,” Gogia said in his statement to the police.

The collapse

But IT raids in 2024 allegedly put a spanner in the works. Gogia was allegedly forced to pay Rs 3.5 crore in dues, leaving him broke. It could not have come at a worse time: he was trying to snag his most profitable client, the Unity Group family.

“People started pressuring us to return their money. The complaints and criminal cases started,” he allegedly told the police.

Days after Gogia’s arrest, Delhi Police asked Ram Singh to join the probe. Singh, however, ignored the summons for five months, prompting a local court to issue a non-bailable warrant. Singh is yet to be arrested, but during his questioning, he had denied the allegations.

On Gogia, he claimed to have merely “transferred him money for investment into his property business”.

But back in Gogia’s old area of Rajinder Nagar, memories of the man who allegedly swindled some of the most elite families of Delhi have begun fading.

At his old building, his name now elicits a confused silence. “Kaun Gogia?” one neighbour asked, before turning to security guard Krishna. “Yahan Mohit Gogia naam ka bhi koi tha? (Did a man named Mohit Gogia ever live here?)”