Seven Summonses, Two Appearances: ₹2,426 Crore Taken From 4,600 Homebuyers, ₹2,399 Crore Frozen, and Four Years Later Not One Verdict

The record in numbers

Every figure below comes from an Enforcement Directorate (ED) press release, a court order as reported by news agencies, or a tribunal order. None is a finding of guilt.

The attached property equals 98.9% of the ₹2,425.99 crore the ED says was collected. Attachment is provisional. It freezes property and returns nothing to buyers.

What the court recorded: seven summonses, two appearances

On 19 September 2026, Special Judge (PMLA) Sachin Jain of the Saket District Court dismissed Nayan N. Raheja’s anticipatory bail application. The order, as reported by ANI, rests on a count that is hard to argue with.

The ED served summonses on him seven times. He appeared before its Gurugram Zonal Office twice. On five occasions he failed to appear and cooperate, in the court’s words, “on one pretext or the other”.

The court held that this conduct “disentitles him to the concession of anticipatory bail”. It said such relief is granted only in exceptional circumstances, where an accused can show he was falsely implicated to harass and humiliate him.

The court made two further findings against him at this stage:

• Section 45 not satisfied. He had not shown reasonable grounds for believing he is not guilty of money laundering, which the twin conditions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) require before bail.
• No automatic exit from the PMLA. Not being named or charge-sheeted in the underlying police cases does not by itself absolve him. He must at least show, prima facie, that he did not deal with proceeds of crime.

There is a harder edge to the record. On 30 July 2026 the Delhi High Court took on record his undertaking that he “will fully cooperate with the Enforcement Directorate”. ED Special Public Prosecutor Anand Kirti placed that undertaking before the Saket court when opposing bail, according to The News Mill’s ANI-based report.

One caution is owed to readers. Public reports do not list the dates of the seven summonses. In August the ED told another Saket judge that father and son joined the probe in 2025, then missed four appearances and ignored summonses issued in April 2026. Some absences therefore predate the undertaking. Whether any came after it is not established on the public record.

The money trail the ED alleges

The ED’s case is that homebuyers’ money was taken for flats and spent on something else. Its investigation began from multiple FIRs registered by the Economic Offences Wing on complaints from buyers, with further FIRs in Gurugram.

The projects named in court are Raheja Revanta, Raheja Shilas, Raheja Trinity, Raheja Oma, Raheja Mall, Raheja Aranya, Raheja Atharva and Vedanta. The allegation in every FIR is the same: money was collected for homes and commercial units, and the units were not delivered.

The agency’s 28 April 2026 press release sets out the alleged route of the money:

1. RDL collected about ₹2,425.99 crore from around 4,600 homebuyers “under the pretext of providing residential units”.
2. A “substantial portion” was siphoned off through “a complex web of related entities and shell companies”.
3. The money ended up with entities controlled by the director, his family members and close associates.
4. It was used for purposes unrelated to the projects, “including the acquisition of assets and other personal uses”.

The ED searched premises linked to the company on 27 June 2025 and again on 25 April 2026. The first attachment covered property of N.A. Buildwell Pvt. Ltd. and Riyasat Palaces Ltd., which the ED calls related entities, and of Navin M. Raheja and his family members.

The figures against Nayan Raheja personally are far smaller than the headline numbers. He is alleged to have received ₹1.23 crore, about 0.09% of the ₹1,353.26 crore said to be diverted. The ED’s case against him rests less on that sum than on his alleged role: that he looked after the affairs of RDL, or was a director of subsidiaries into which buyers’ funds were diverted.

The human scale is clearest in Raheja Revanta in Sector 78, Gurugram. The project was launched in 2011 with possession promised in 36 to 48 months. An extended deadline of July 2022 was also missed. On 8 June 2026 the National Company Law Tribunal admitted an insolvency petition by 176 allottees, many of whom had paid 90% to 95% of the price, as LiveLaw reported. The tribunal rejected the company’s force majeure defence.

The defence, and what has not yet been tested

Nayan Raheja and the company deny wrongdoing, and their case deserves to be stated in full.

• No management role. His counsel says he was a director only from 15 January 2003 to 12 January 2008 and from 16 August 2010 to 26 November 2010. He holds 0.81% of RDL’s shares and draws a salary for advising on architectural drawings.
• No predicate case against him. His High Court petition says that in two of the three FIRs naming him, police filed chargesheets without arraying him as an accused. The third was settled with the complainant.
• No proceeds of crime. The defence says nothing is attributable to him, so the foundation for invoking the PMLA is absent. His petition calls the proceedings a “gross abuse of the process of law”.
• Ready to cooperate. Senior Advocate Vikas Pahwa told the High Court on 1 October that the applicant is ready to join the investigation.
• No diversion at all. RDL says it invested more in the project than it collected, that a forensic audit supervised by the Haryana real estate regulator confirms this, and that delays arose from missing government infrastructure.

Each of these points is arguable. None has been accepted by a court so far, and three of them sit awkwardly beside the record.

First, the promise to cooperate is being offered after a court counted five absences against seven summonses. Readiness declared in a bail hearing is not the same as attendance when summoned.

Second, his role is described differently depending on who is speaking. The defence calls him an architectural adviser with a fractional shareholding. Agency reports of the August order describe him as managing director. The ED says he ran the parent company’s affairs or sat on subsidiary boards. Only evidence can settle that, and evidence requires him to answer questions.

Third, the audit the company relies on has not been published in the reports reviewed for this article. A document that is said to clear ₹2,400 crore of collections should be on the public record, not cited from behind a press statement.

Fifteen years in dates

Revanta buyers have waited 15 years, and the money-laundering case has run for four without a verdict.

The system’s failure is as plain as the allegations

The harshest facts in this file concern the pace of the state as much as the conduct of the accused.

The agency moved late. The ED registered its case in 2022. Its first searches came on 27 June 2025. Its first attachment came on 28 April 2026. The defence has already turned that delay into an argument, telling the Saket court that warrants were being sought nearly four years after the case began.

The agency has not followed through. In August the ED asked for open-ended non-bailable warrants and did not get them. In September it won the refusal of anticipatory bail. On 1 October, in the High Court, it sought time to respond. No arrest has been reported, and public reports do not say whether any interim protection remains in force. An agency that tells one court a man is non-cooperative should not need an adjournment to say so in the next.

Frozen is not returned. A provisional attachment lasts 180 days unless the PMLA’s Adjudicating Authority confirms it. For the first order, that window closes around late October 2026. The reports reviewed do not say whether it has been confirmed. Even a confirmed attachment pays no buyer until a court orders restitution.

The national numbers explain the fear. The Finance Ministry told the Rajya Sabha that the ED registered 4,622 PMLA cases from FY22 to FY26, filed 2,444 prosecution complaints and arrested 1,243 people. Convictions came in 43 cases, involving 104 accused, according to Business Today. That is fewer than one conviction for every 100 cases registered, though the two counts cover cases from different years.

The buyers are fighting on five fronts. They have gone to the police, the ED, the Haryana regulator, the consumer commission and the insolvency tribunal. Revanta allottees who paid up to 95% of the price in a 2011 project are now creditors in an insolvency process.

Bail is for the High Court to decide on the law, and refusal of bail is not punishment. But the argument that liberty costs nothing in a case like this is false. When a trial takes a decade, the people who serve the sentence are the ones paying rent and EMIs on a home that does not exist.

What must happen now

This case needs deadlines, and each institution involved owes the buyers one.

1. The ED must finish the investigation on a published timetable. It should state whether a prosecution complaint has been filed and, if not, by what date it will be. A case registered in 2022 cannot still be at the summons stage in 2026.
2. The ED must act on its own submissions. If it believes custodial interrogation is necessary, it should say so and seek it. If it does not, it should stop arguing non-cooperation and move to trial.
3. The Delhi High Court should decide the bail and quashing petitions without further adjournments. Both sides are entitled to a prompt answer, and so are 4,600 families.
4. The Adjudicating Authority must rule on all three attachments within the statutory period. The ED should then apply for restitution so that attached property is turned towards buyers’ claims.
5. The special court should fix a time-bound trial schedule once it takes cognisance. Financial cases with documentary evidence do not need a decade.
6. The Economic Offences Wing must conclude the underlying FIRs. A money-laundering trial cannot outrun the predicate cases it depends on.
7. The Haryana regulator should publish the forensic audit RDL relies on. If it clears the company, buyers should read it. If it does not, the company should stop citing it.
8. Everyone summoned must appear. Cooperation promised to a High Court has to be shown at the investigator’s desk.

Questions the public record does not answer

• Why do the ED’s press releases say ₹2,425.99 crore was collected while court proceedings cite ₹2,699.13 crore?
• How many of the five missed summonses came after the 30 July 2026 undertaking to the High Court?
• What happened at the 6 October hearing, and is any protection from arrest in force today?
• Has the ED filed a prosecution complaint, and against whom?
• Has the Adjudicating Authority confirmed any of the three attachments?
• What was Nayan Raheja’s actual role in RDL and its subsidiaries after 2010?
• Where is the regulator-supervised forensic audit, and what does it say about each project?
• How much of the ₹2,399.65 crore in attached property can lawfully reach homebuyers, and when?

Disclaimer

No court of law has convicted Nayan N. Raheja, Navin M. Raheja or Raheja Developers Ltd of any offence in this matter as of 9 October 2026. Everything attributed to the Enforcement Directorate in this article is an allegation under investigation. Allegations remain allegations until they are proved at trial.

The refusal of anticipatory bail is not a finding of guilt. The Saket court’s observations were made at the bail stage and do not decide the case. Provisional attachment is a preventive step, open to challenge, and is not confiscation. Admission of an insolvency petition is not a finding of fraud.

Nayan Raheja and Raheja Developers Ltd deny the allegations. Their stated position is set out above. Every person named is presumed innocent unless and until a competent court holds otherwise.

This article is based on ED press releases, court and tribunal proceedings as reported by news agencies and legal publications, and company statements available on the date above. Matters before the courts may have moved since. The criticism of delay is directed at institutions and is made in the public interest of homebuyers. It is not a comment on the merits of any pending case.