The R S Infrastructure Scam: How M3M Allegedly Converted Illegal Licences into Hundreds of Crores While Homebuyers Paid the Price
In the long catalogue of alleged real-estate frauds that have scarred Gurugram, few episodes match the sheer audacity of the R S Infrastructure Private Limited scam. What began as a 2005 company floated by Basant Bansal, Roop Kumar Bansal, Pankaj Bansal and Abha Bansal with two illiterate staff members — Sarjeet and Raghubir — as its initial directors, evolved into one of the most brazen examples of regulatory capture, licence manipulation and money laundering in Haryana’s recent history. By 2011 the promoters had monetised commercial licences obtained on residential and panchayat land for sums variously recorded as ₹726 crore (by the Enforcement Directorate) to over ₹1,100 crore (in complaint material), moved the proceeds through shell companies, closed entities without significant tax payment, and allegedly channelled part of the cash through hawala. The land and the licences that generated this windfall were secured, the same material asserts, with the active assistance of then Director General of Town & Country Planning T.C. Gupta and political intermediaries.
The Enforcement Directorate has already treated the episode as a core money-laundering case. In July 2024 it provisionally attached 88.29 acres of land valued at ₹300.11 crore belonging to M3M India Infrastructures Private Limited in Basharia village, Gurugram, recording proceeds of crime of approximately ₹300.15 crore. Earlier attachments of ₹124.57 crore in the related Religare Finvest probe further link the same network. These are not fringe allegations; they are the subject of active central-agency action.
The Birth of a Vehicle: Illiterate Directors and Laundered Capital
R S Infrastructure was incorporated in 2005 as an original M3M broker company. Its first directors were two illiterate staff members. Within a year the Bansals, together with High Responsible Realtors Private Limited and Lalit Goyal (through Commander Realtors, Ornamental Realtors and Dignity Buildcon), had acquired land falling in the draft master plan of Sector 62, Gurugram. The complaint dossiers state that the acquisitions were financed with proceeds of earlier money laundering and funds siphoned from IREO land purchases in Sectors 58 to 66.
Once the land was in hand, the same network applied for and obtained commercial licences. The licences were granted on parcels that were either residential under the Gurugram Master Plan 2021 or belonged to the panchayat (government land). Under the rules of the Town & Country Planning Department, such land did not qualify for commercial licensing. Earlier applications had been rejected for precisely these reasons. When T.C. Gupta assumed charge of the department, the file was revived, classified as a case of “extreme hardship,” and cleared as a special case. The beneficiaries — M3M promoters and Lalit Goyal-controlled entities — were described in the official record as “poor farmers.” The matter was never placed before the Cabinet, as required. T.C. Gupta and the Bansals hailed from the same village in Taoru, Haryana. Sunil Malik, a close college friend of Gupta and a land broker linked to both M3M and IREO, is alleged to have acted as the political conduit, drawing in figures such as B.B. Batra and the then Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.
Monetisation and the Vanishing Trail
After the licences were secured, R S Infrastructure and associated entities sold the land together with the licences and transferred the company’s shares for a consideration recorded by the ED at approximately ₹726 crore (complaint material places the figure above ₹1,100 crore) to a Religare Group associate. The proceeds were then moved through a chain of shell and other companies. Several of those companies were later closed without payment of significant income tax. Part of the cash, the complaint material asserts, was laundered through the hawala network and reached Lalit Goyal. The original proceeds of 2011 have, according to the same dossiers, grown through subsequent land investments into assets now valued in excess of ₹5,000 crore.
The ED’s investigation has confirmed the essential contours: the licences were obtained unlawfully, the sale generated proceeds of crime, and those proceeds were diverted into the accounts of the promoters and their family members before being used for the operational and business expenses of M3M group companies. The July 2024 attachment of ₹300.11 crore of M3M land and the earlier ₹124.57 crore attachment in the Religare Finvest case are direct consequences of that finding.
The Larger Pattern: From R S Infrastructure to Bhiwadi and Beyond
R S Infrastructure does not stand alone. It is one node in a network that the Enforcement Directorate has been systematically dismantling. In June 2023 the ED raided M3M and IREO premises, seizing seventeen luxury vehicles (Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Mercedes Maybach and others) valued at over ₹60 crore, jewellery and bullion worth ₹5.75 crore, and cash of ₹15 lakh. On 8 June 2023 it arrested Roop Kumar Bansal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in connection with the Bhiwadi diversion of approximately ₹400–404 crore — a circular transaction in which Misty Meadows (Bansal-controlled) and five shell companies channelled IREO money back to M3M while IREO wrote the value down. A family driver had been installed as director to facilitate the paper trail. Basant Bansal and Pankaj Bansal were arrested days later in a linked PMLA case; although the Supreme Court later quashed those two arrests as procedurally “clandestine,” the underlying ECIR and prosecution complaints remain active. Twenty-eight M3M companies have been named.
The same promoters appear in the alleged Commander Realtors shareholding transfers (more than 25 licence-holding companies controlling hundreds of acres moved for a nominal ₹2.5 crore), the SU Estate sale of 11.6 acres in Sector 65 to Mangalam Multiplex in alleged violation of FDI norms, the Grace Corridors collaboration agreements, and the Star-City undervalued transfers of Sectors 58–60 land. Parallel criminal proceedings continue: a Delhi Economic Offences Wing chargesheet has led to summons against Basant, Roop and Pankaj Bansal in a ₹450-crore land-exchange fraud complaint by MGF Developments. Multiple homebuyer FIRs against IREO form the predicate offences for the PMLA investigation. Haryana RERA and consumer forums remain seized of numerous complaints against M3M projects, including the Smart World Sector 61 project in which nearly 800 buyers have alleged systematic misrepresentation.
Analytical Verdict: Regulatory Capture as Business Model
The R S Infrastructure episode crystallises the method. A company is floated with illiterate directors. Land is acquired with allegedly laundered capital. Licences that the rules prohibit are obtained by describing the promoters as poor farmers and classifying the case as extreme hardship. The licences are monetised for hundreds of crores. The proceeds disappear into a web of shells, some of which are closed without tax; part of the cash is alleged to move through hawala. The same political and bureaucratic networks reappear. The same luxury lifestyle — the fleet of imported cars seized by the ED — sits in stark contrast to the incomplete projects and the stranded homebuyers.
The Enforcement Directorate has already attached hundreds of crores of assets, seized a fleet of luxury vehicles, and placed the M3M promoters under the shadow of active money-laundering proceedings. The R S Infrastructure scam, with its documented licence violations, its hardship classification, and its subsequent monetisation, stands as one of the clearest exhibits in that case file. Until the full money trail — from the original land purchases through the illegal licences, the Religare sale, the shell companies, and the subsequent investments — is traced, frozen and restored, the episode will remain a landmark illustration of how regulatory capture and money laundering allegedly became a core business model for one of Gurugram’s most prominent real-estate groups.
The facts already established by the Enforcement Directorate and the CBI are severe. The residual allegations of scale and subsequent asset growth are more severe still. Both demand the fullest possible accountability.
