How a Supreme Court–watched “homebuyer fraud” machine reached Rajarhat — and why CBI’s 18th chargesheet still reads like a half-written invoice

They sold a forest. They sold towers. They sold a podium garden and a “lifestyle.” What the Central Bureau of Investigation has now put on paper, in its own dry official English, is simpler and uglier: that a builder, two Indiabulls-group companies and unnamed NBFC officials allegedly induced homebuyers with false assurances, then extracted money by illegal and deceptive means. That is not a columnist’s flourish. That is the CBI’s own 24 August 2026 press note — the 18th chargesheet in the Supreme Court–directed homebuyer series — filed before the CBI Special Court-II at Alipore, North 24 Parganas.

Call it what the note refuses to call it in rupees. The agency that can count ₹19,694.33 crore of bank exposure in an RCom FIR, and can put a ₹47.95 lakh figure on a Srikakulam postmaster, suddenly develops a stammer when the victim is a family that paid for a flat in Rajarhat. No loss figure. No buyer count. No named NBFC. No named director. Just the ritual sentence: “substantial evidence.” If this is a crackdown, it still arrives wearing a gag.

The accused, as CBI chose to name them

The chargesheet names:

• M/s MKHS Housing LLP — the builder.
• M/s Indiabulls Distribution Services Limited, now M/s Indiabulls Nests Limited, described as MKHS’s designated partner, plus its directors/officials.
• M/s Indiabulls Investment Advisors Limited, now M/s Indiabulls Urban Residency Limited, and its directors.
• Unnamed NBFC officials, alleged co-conspirators.

MCA records show MKHS Housing LLP (LLPIN AAB-4570) was incorporated on 11 April 2013, registered at Podra, Langolpota, Rajarhat, Bishnupur, North 24 Parganas — ₹90,000 of contributed capital to run a housing business. Designated partners on public filings have included Srikant Sikaria, Kamal Chopra and Subhadeep Pal. The CBI note does not itself list those individuals. That silence is not innocence. It is opacity.

Indiabulls Distribution Services Limited was incorporated on 11 June 2009 (CIN U68200DL2009PLC191143). It later changed its legal name to Indiabulls Nests Limited (name-change recorded around December 2024). Authorised capital: ₹2 crore. Paid-up: about ₹28.51 lakh. Latest public financial snapshot circulating on company databases: revenue of about ₹4.95 crore for the year ended 31 March 2025. The CBI is not prosecuting a brand jingle. It is prosecuting, on paper, a corporate chain that kept the Indiabulls name while the brass plate changed.

Reporting that followed the chargesheet associated MKHS with the Rain Forest residential project in Rajarhat. Property listings for “Mounthill The Rain Forest” advertised a 15-acre layout, 21 towers, 2/3/4 BHK units from about 939 to 1,914 sq ft, launch around August 2013, advertised possession windows around February 2020 / February 2021, RERA ID HIRA/A/NOR/2018/000035, and hundreds of launched apartments (PropTiger listed 594). Separate consumer-forum records cited in later coverage include at least one buyer who said more than ₹11 lakh had been paid towards two flats before seeking cancellation and refund. CBI’s own note does not confirm the project brand or that figure. The gap between the brochure and the chargesheet is the entire scandal.

The alleged method — and why it is not a “dispute”

CBI’s theory is not a delayed plaster job. It is a criminal theory:

conspiracy with NBFC officials → false assurances to buyers and investors → financial benefit by illegal and deceptive means → IPC heads of criminal conspiracy, abetment, cheating and criminal breach of trust.

That is the same skeleton the agency has been nailing to the wall since the Supreme Court, on 29 April 2025, looked at a pile of homebuyer petitions and used the phrase the industry still pretends not to hear: an “unholy nexus” between builders and banks. The Court directed CBI to register seven preliminary enquiries. The batch before the Court then ran to over 170 petitions and more than 1,200 homebuyer-borrowers. Supertech alone, the amicus told the Court, had taken loans of ₹5,157.86 crore since 1998 across 21 projects and 19 banks, with about 800 aggrieved Supertech buyers in that litigation. Corporation Bank, the amicus said, had advanced more than ₹2,700 crore to builders through subvention schemes. Eight lenders, including Indiabulls Housing Finance, PNB / PNB Housing, DHFL and IIFL, kept recurring across projects.

The subvention trick is not complicated, which is why it worked. Banks and housing-finance companies disbursed 60–70 per cent of the loan straight to the builder while the tower was still a rendering. The builder was supposed to service EMIs until possession. Possession did not arrive. The EMI did. Buyers were left paying for air. That is not “market risk.” That is a structure that prepaid the developer and postponed the pain onto the household. The Supreme Court said so in substance. CBI is now supposed to prove it in court.

Eighteen chargesheets. Fifty FIRs. Then fifty-five. Still the same shrug.

By 24 August 2026, CBI’s own note said 17 chargesheets had already gone in against a roll-call that reads like a cemetery of NCR and Bengaluru skyline brands: Rudra Buildwell Constructions, Dream Procon, Jaypee Infratech, AVJ Developers, CHD Developers, Sequel Buildcon, Logix City Developers, Manju J Homes, Shubhkamna Buildtech, Ninex Developers, Decent Buildwell, Rudra Buildwell Projects, Ithaca Estate, LGCL Urban Homes, Saha Infratech, Ozone Urbana Infra Developers — plus “officials of certain banks and financial institutions.” MKHS and the two Indiabulls entities made eighteen. Thirty-one more cases, the same note said, were still being investigated.

Rewind the official scoreboard and the slowness becomes the story:

• 20 May 2026: 9th chargesheet (Manju J Homes, Ghaziabad; SBI officers named; PC Act invoked). CBI then said it was probing 50 SC-directed cases.
• 8 June 2026: 11th chargesheet (Ninex, Gurugram).
• 25 June 2026: 12th (Decent Buildwell, Greater Noida).
• 7 July 2026: 14th and 15th (Ithaca Estate and LGCL, Bengaluru — HDFC, ICICI and Indiabulls Housing Finance officials named in that cluster).
• 17 July 2026: 17th (Ozone Urbana, Bengaluru).
• 7 August 2026: CBI told the Supreme Court probe was complete in 18 of 50 FIRs — 17 chargesheets and one closure. ASG Aishwarya Bhati said bank officials had been found, on the agency’s case, to have colluded with builders; PC Act had been invoked; sanction was sought from SBI, Bank of India, UCO Bank, HDFC and ICICI. The Court told six banks and housing-finance companies to process prosecution sanction within two weeks, told CBI to share proceeds-of-crime facts with the Enforcement Directorate, and warned that settling with a few buyers would not kill the criminal case. The same bench has also said, in as many words, that CBI’s reputation includes keeping investigations pending “for years and years.”
• 10 September 2026: five fresh FIRs (four Ozone-group, one Vivansaa Baalsam); searches at 12 locations in Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune; FIR count 50 → 55. Same day: 20th chargesheet against Ajnara India and 15 public servants from ICICI, HDFC, PNB Housing and Sammaan Capital (the renamed Indiabulls Housing Finance) in the Ajnara Ambrosia, Sector-118 Noida matter.

So the Rajarhat filing is not a one-off morality play. It is Exhibit 18 in a catalogue the Supreme Court has been kicking down the corridor for a year and a half. The names change. The alleged script does not: promise, collect, stall, shrug.

By September 2026 the Enforcement Directorate, according to agency-linked reporting, had opened 22 PMLA ECIRs off CBI FIRs in this builder–bank series — the money-trail twin of the cheating case. That is not a verdict either. It is an admission that the cash did not evaporate into brick.

What this chargesheet carefully does not do

This is where the taunt belongs to the investigators as much as to the accused.

The 24 August note does not invoke the Prevention of Corruption Act, unlike several sibling chargesheets that named bank officers as public servants. Either no public servant is on this particular charge, or CBI chose not to say so in public. In a series built on a nexus, leaving the NBFC official nameless in the press note is not caution. It is a courtesy the buyer never received.

The note does not quantify the Rajarhat alleged loss. In a consumer case cited around the same project, one household was already talking about ₹11 lakh-plus on two flats. Scale that across a 15-acre, multi-tower launch and the official silence looks less like legal prudence and more like a refusal to put a number on the wound.

The note does not tell buyers when the trial will start, whether the project accounts are frozen, whether a receiver is in, whether refunds are even on the table. A chargesheet is not a key to a flat. It is a piece of paper that says: we think we can prove you were lied to. Until a court agrees, the EMI and the unfinished floor still belong to the same people who signed the form.

And no: this file is not the Yes Bank–DHFL further-investigation fight, and it is not the separate Supreme Court track in which, on 18 August 2026, a bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice V. Mohana directed CBI to probe alleged promoter-level irregularities at Indiabulls Housing Finance / Sammaan Capital notwithstanding an EOW report. Those are different dockets. Mixing them is how public-relations departments muddy a chargesheet. Keeping them apart is how reporting stays honest. The honest sentence is still damning enough: Indiabulls-branded entities keep walking into CBI paper.

The demand that should have been made on day one

A chargesheet in August 2026 on a project launched in 2013 is not speed. It is archaeology.

The Supreme Court asked for a time-bound probe. Banks were given two weeks to move sanction. CBI was told to stop treating delay as a working method. Homebuyers have already waited through advertised possession dates that slipped from 2020–21 into the middle of the decade. Every additional year is not “due process.” It is a transfer of wealth from the family that paid to whoever still holds the cash.

What is required, on the public record as it stands:

1. Name the NBFC and the officials in open court filings that can be reported, subject only to fair-trial limits. A nexus case with an anonymous financier is a half-charge.
2. Publish the alleged loss, the number of allottees, and the disbursal trail for the Rajarhat project — the way CBI already publishes crore-figures in bank-fraud notes.
3. Time-bound trial before the Alipore special court: day-to-day hearings, no adjournment culture dressed up as complexity.
4. ED attachment, where the PMLA case exists, of alleged proceeds so the money cannot be renamed, merged, or parked in the next LLP with a ₹90,000 capital contribution.
5. Prosecution sanction clocks that actually expire. Two weeks meant two weeks.
6. Interim buyer protection — stop-EMI orders where possession was never given, and a court-supervised escrow — instead of another press note about “common citizens.”

The industry will call this “trial by media.” The buyers have already lived through trial by brochure.

Disclaimer

All references in this article to MKHS Housing LLP, Indiabulls Distribution Services Limited / Indiabulls Nests Limited, Indiabulls Investment Advisors Limited / Indiabulls Urban Residency Limited, their directors, officials, designated partners, and any unnamed NBFC officials are drawn from a CBI chargesheet / official CBI press note dated 24 August 2026, from contemporaneous news reports of that note, from Ministry of Corporate Affairs and LEI filings, and from Supreme Court–reported directions in the wider builder–bank subvention matters. These are allegations. A chargesheet is an accusation after investigation, not a finding of guilt. No court of law has convicted MKHS Housing LLP, Indiabulls Nests Limited, Indiabulls Urban Residency Limited, or any named or unnamed director, partner or NBFC official in this Rajarhat matter as of the date of this article. Company-register names of designated partners are public incorporation facts; they are not a substitute for a conviction. Project descriptions (Rain Forest / Mounthill The Rain Forest) are from property listings and secondary reporting associating MKHS with that development; the CBI press note itself identifies only “a housing project situated at Rajarhat Town Area.” Other Indiabulls / Sammaan Capital proceedings cited above are separate files and do not prove this one. Every accused person and company is entitled to a full defence at trial. Allegations remain allegations until a competent court says otherwise.

The public interest is not in a louder press release. It is in a faster trial, a published money trail, and an end to the practice of disbursing a family’s home loan to a tower that exists mainly on a hoarding.