Delhi Police’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) has arrested a key accused in a massive ₹2,700-crore Ponzi scam that duped around 150 investors with promises of assured weekly returns, land plots in Gujarat’s Dholera Smart City, and even gifts like motorcycles and laptops. The accused allegedly used doctored videos showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsing the project to lure victims into the fraudulent scheme.

Jugal Kishore, 57, who was arrested in Shahdara in Delhi on Wednesday, represented a company called Nexa Evergreen Private Limited, which he claimed had a project in Dholera.

“A joint complaint was filed by Mrs Neha Kumari from Karawal Nagar in Delhi and 97 other complainants against Nexa Evergreen Pvt Ltd and its office bearers in 2023. It was alleged that accused Jugal Kishore and Vinod Kumar represented themselves as directors of the company and assured investors that on their investment they would receive assured weekly returns and be allotted plots in Dholera…,” Additional CP (EOW) Amrutha Gugoloth said.

Kishore and other accused allegedly showed a presentation for the victims of the fraud over Zoom, which included doctored videos of the PM, police said. The victims were promised a 3% monthly return on their “investment”, which they would get every Tuesday in their bank accounts, apart from plots of land in the smart city.

They were also promised Royal Enfield motorcycles, laptops, and mobile phones upon reaching certain milestones in the project, police said.

The victims told police that they were asked to install an app from Google Play, on which they could track their returns every Tuesday, an official said. After functioning smoothly initially, the app crashed on January 23, 2023. The website of the company would not open, and Kishore would not take the calls of the investors.

“Accused persons including chief manager [of the company] Ranveer Singh Bijarania and other office bearers had absconded, their website had been taken down and the investors’ application had been disabled. FIRs of the same pattern were also registered in Sikar (Rajasthan) and Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), almost in the same timeframe,” Gugoloth said.

Investigations suggested the investors had been victims of a Ponzi scheme, a type of investment fraud in which older investors are paid high returns using the money collected from newer investors.

“The group operated across the country with its head office at Ahmedabad. Accused Subhash Bijarania, an ex-serviceman, and Ranveer Singh Bijarania, are directors of Nexa Evergreen Pvt Ltd and other group entities. They initiated a scheme enticing the public to invest in their township project named “Nexa Evergreen Project” in Dholera,” Gugoloth said.