Builder Fraud in Delhi NCR: Two Decades of Stalled Homes, and the Year the Supreme Court Sent In the CBI

No Indian city has generated more builder-fraud litigation than the National Capital Region. It is the geography of the country’s three most consequential homebuyer cases — and, since 2025, of a Supreme Court–ordered CBI investigation into how builders and their financiers dealt with the people who paid for flats that never came.

2025: the Supreme Court sends in the CBI

In April 2025, hearing petitions from homebuyers stuck in stalled NCR projects, the Supreme Court observed what it called a nexus between builders and financiers and directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct a preliminary inquiry. The court specifically flagged the misuse of subvention schemes — the “no EMI till possession” structures under which banks disbursed loan money to builders upfront while buyers were promised they would pay nothing until they got their keys.

The CBI registered seven preliminary enquiries, completed six within three months, and reported back. On the court’s direction it then converted its findings into 22 regular FIRs and searched 47 locations across Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad in July 2025.

The FIRs name some of the region’s largest developers — among them Supertech Limited, Jaypee Infratech Limited, Ajnara India Limited, Vatika Limited, CHD Developers Limited, Logix City Developers, SahaInfratech, Docile Buildtech, Dream Procon, Shubhkamna Buildtech and Sequel Buildcon — along with unnamed officials of financial institutions alleged to have sanctioned project-linked loans in violation of guidelines. These are accusations in FIRs, not findings; no court has tried them. But the direction of the inquiry matters: for the first time, the financing side of the arrangement is under criminal investigation alongside the builders.

How the subvention trap worked

The scheme the court flagged had three parties. The buyer signed a builder-buyer agreement and a loan agreement. The bank disbursed most of the loan to the builder at the start — not against construction milestones. The builder promised to pay the buyer’s EMIs until possession.

When a builder stopped paying, the default landed on the buyer, because the loan was in the buyer’s name. Buyers who had been promised “no EMI till possession” found themselves paying EMIs on money a builder had already spent, for a flat that did not exist, while their credit scores absorbed the missed payments. The FIRs allege this pattern across multiple projects.

The three cases that built the law

Amrapali. In July 2019 the Supreme Court delivered the judgment that reset the field. It found homebuyers’ money had been diverted, cancelled the group’s registrations, and did something no court had done at that scale: it took the projects away. A court receiver was appointed, and NBCC — a public-sector construction company — was tasked with completing the stalled towers. By 2026, NBCC has reported to the court that around 25,000 flats are complete, with about Rs 3,177 crore raised partly by selling roughly 6,686 units whose original bookers defaulted or never came forward. The receiver’s office continues to publish possession schedules, and the court has warned buyers who have not claimed completed flats that unclaimed units will be sold.

Unitech. A court-ordered forensic audit reported that between 2006 and 2014 the company took in approximately Rs 14,270 crore from about 29,800 homebuyers across 74 projects, plus Rs 1,805 crore from financial institutions — and that thousands of crores of it moved out, including, per the audit, to offshore jurisdictions. In January 2020 the Supreme Court allowed the central government to take total management control of the company; a government-appointed board has run it since. The Directorate of Enforcement has continued to trace the money: in 2026 it said its probe found Rs 244 crore of homebuyers’ funds diverted to a realty fund, and it has provisionally attached land parcels including one valued at Rs 125.06 crore.

Supertech. The company’s twin towers at Noida — nearly 100 metres tall — were demolished on 28 August 2022 on the Supreme Court’s orders, after the court found the towers had been built in violation of building norms through collusion between the company and officials of the Noida authority. The company itself entered insolvency, and in December 2024 the NCLAT appointed NBCC to complete 16 of its stalled projects — roughly 50,000 flats, at an estimated cost of about Rs 9,500 crore. The Supreme Court, after a brief stay, upheld that arrangement in 2025 and directed that no court or tribunal pass interim orders stalling construction.

The pattern across all three: the corporate entity loses control of the homes. Courts now treat completing the flats — through NBCC, a receiver, or a government board — as the primary remedy, ahead of both liquidation and the promoters’ interests.

What a stuck NCR buyer can actually do

• Check whether your project is in a court-supervised completion. Amrapali buyers deal with the court receiver’s office; Supertech buyers in the 16 NBCC projects are covered by the NCLAT-approved arrangement; Unitech buyers deal with the government-appointed board. If yours is one of these, the process exists already — join it rather than litigating alone.
• UP RERA / Haryana RERA — for delay, refund and interest claims against a registered project: up-rera.in (Noida, Greater Noida, Ghaziabad) or haryanarera.gov.in (Gurugram, Faridabad). A RERA order for refund can be executed as a recovery certificate through the district administration.
• Consumer commission — deficiency-of-service claims, filed online at edaakhil.nic.in; the National Consumer Helpline is 1915.
• Insolvency — homebuyers are financial creditors under the IBC and can move the NCLT collectively (the threshold is 100 allottees or 10% of a project’s allottees, whichever is less).
• If your case involves the subvention pattern — a loan disbursed to the builder upfront, EMIs the builder stopped paying — preserve the builder-buyer agreement, the loan agreement, the disbursement schedule and every EMI communication. That paper trail is precisely what the CBI’s FIRs are built on.

For the national picture — which agency does what, and in what order to use them — see our homebuyer’s enforcement map.

Sources and attribution

The enforcement facts on this page are taken from public records: court and tribunal orders, FIRs registered by investigating agencies, attachment and arrest communications of the Directorate of Enforcement, orders and published figures of state real-estate regulatory authorities, and police communications as reported. Where this page describes a finding of a court, it is a finding. Where it describes an FIR, a prosecution complaint, an attachment or a regulator’s allegation, it is an accusation or an interim measure — not a conviction, and not a determination of guilt.

A note on names

Companies are named on this page only as they appear in public orders, FIRs or official releases, with that attribution. No individual is named. Where a company shares part of its name with other, unrelated businesses, nothing on this page refers to those unrelated businesses.

Right of reply

Every company named on this page is invited to respond. If any figure, date, name or description here is inaccurate, write to us with the correcting document and we will publish the correction, or the response in full, alongside this article without charge and without editing its substance.

No recovery agents

Cases like these attract people offering, for a fee, to recover stuck money. No government agency charges a victim to be treated as a victim, and no private service can release money attached by a court. Use the official channels listed above. Oquilia takes no fee from readers, offers no recovery service, and refers no one to any legal practice.