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Every individual named in this article is either a petitioner in a publicly listed Supreme Court case, a named complainant in a verified FIR, or a publicly identified accused in court proceedings. All figures, case numbers, and legal findings are sourced from Supreme Court judgments and forensic audit reports on record at indiankanoon.org, LiveLaw, Bar and Bench, Outlook India, and National Herald India. Sources are cited inline throughout.
Rupesh Kumar Singh booked a flat in O2 Valley, a residential project in Greater Noida West developed by the Amrapali Group. He later explained exactly why he signed the agreement.
“When I saw Dhoni in an advertisement of the project, I thought that if such a credible face was associated with this brand, the builder will also be credible and I was confident of possession of my flat. But it didn’t happen. I was duped because of Dhoni.”
Singh’s account was reported directly by Outlook India in its investigation into Amrapali homebuyer testimonies. He subsequently filed an FIR with the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police naming Amrapali Group’s Chairman and Managing Director Anil Kumar Sharma along with group officials Shiv Priya and Mohit Gupta under Sections 406, 409, 420 and 120B of the Indian Penal Code, covering criminal breach of trust, cheating and criminal conspiracy.
He was one of 42,000 homebuyers across Amrapali Group projects in Noida and Greater Noida who had paid between 40 and 100 percent of their flat’s total cost and received nothing in return.
(Source: Outlook India, “Amrapali Homebuyers Blame MS Dhoni For Their Miseries”; Economic Offences Wing FIR records)
What the Supreme Court Found
On July 23, 2019, the Supreme Court delivered its landmark judgment in Writ Petition (Civil) No. 940 of 2017, titled Bikram Chatterji and Others vs. Union of India and Others. Bikram Chatterji was a real homebuyer who led the group of petitioners when they approached the Supreme Court in 2017, after the National Company Law Tribunal’s insolvency proceedings against Amrapali Silicon City Private Limited threatened to block buyers from pursuing their existing cases in consumer courts.
The Supreme Court ordered a forensic audit of all 46 companies linked to the Amrapali Group. The court-appointed forensic auditors, Pawan Kumar Aggarwal and Ravinder Bhatia, found across their submitted report that no accounts had been maintained by Amrapali from 2015 to 2018. Every rupee received during those three years was diverted.
The court’s own summary of findings confirmed that not a single construction project undertaken by Amrapali Group was completed during the period of 2010 to 2014, leaving approximately 42,000 flats incomplete.
(Source: Supreme Court of India, W.P. (C) No. 940/2017, judgment dated July 23, 2019, available at indiankanoon.org/doc/6791744; case summary published by International Journal of Law and Legal Research, July 2021, ijllr.com)
The Rs 42.22 Crore and the Cricket Captain
The forensic audit placed before the Supreme Court contained a finding that drew national attention. Auditors Aggarwal and Bhatia reported that the Amrapali Group had paid Rs 42.22 crore to Rhiti Sports Management Private Limited between 2009 and 2015. MS Dhoni, then captain of the Indian cricket team and the face of Amrapali’s advertising, holds a major stake in Rhiti Sports. His wife, Sakshi Singh Dhoni, is a director of Amrapali Mahi Developers Private Limited, a separate company listed in the forensic audit as one of 23 entities created to route homebuyer funds.
The forensic auditors described the arrangements as “sham agreements” and stated plainly: “We feel that Home Buyers money has been diverted illegally and wrongly to Rhiti Sports Management Private Limited and should be recovered from them as the said Agreement in our opinion do not stand the test of Law.”
The Supreme Court reproduced this extract in its judgment verbatim.
Dhoni’s lawyers responded with a counter-affidavit arguing that he was himself a victim because the Amrapali Group had not fully paid his endorsement fees. Senior advocate M.L. Lahoty, who represented the homebuyers’ group before the Supreme Court, responded publicly: “It is for the court to decide to what extent his counter-affidavit is sustainable. But I don’t think he can get away with this plea.”
The Supreme Court subsequently stayed the arbitral proceedings Dhoni had initiated against the Amrapali Group in the Delhi High Court to recover outstanding endorsement dues. The
matter of recovery from Rhiti Sports remained pending in the Supreme Court as of the last reported hearing.
(Sources: Supreme Court judgment W.P. (C) No. 940/2017 dated July 23, 2019; LiveLaw, “Amrapali Homebuyers Money Diverted to Dhoni, Sakshi — Auditors Tell SC,” July 25, 2019, livelaw.in; Bar and Bench, “Amrapali: What Supreme Court Held Against MS Dhoni,” July 27, 2019, barandbench.com; Outlook India, “Amrapali Housing Scam: Supreme Court Issues Notice To MS Dhoni,” outlookindia.com; National Herald India, “Dhoni in More Trouble with 7 FIRs by Amrapali Homebuyers,” December 2019, nationalheraldindia.com)
Seven FIRs and a Name on Every One
Following the Supreme Court verdict, seven separate groups of Amrapali buyers filed FIRs with the Economic Offences Wing of Delhi Police. The seven groups included buyers from O2 Valley, La Residentia, Silicon City, Crystal Homes, Leisure Valley, Adarsh Awas Yojna, and Kingswood. Each FIR named Anil Kumar Sharma, Shiv Priya, and Mohit Gupta as primary accused. Several FIRs additionally requested that the investigating agency look into MS Dhoni’s role and make him an accused as well.
One named complainant across the FIRs, Jitender Kumar, who had booked a flat in Amrapali Leisure Park, stated in his complaint that Dhoni “aggressively promoted the fraudulent activities of the accused persons which lured gullible buyers like me to invest in the said project.”
Anil Kumar Sharma, an IIT graduate who was also president of CREDAI-NCR, the apex body of real estate developers in the Delhi-NCR region, was taken into custody following the Supreme Court proceedings.
(Sources: National Herald India, “Dhoni in More Trouble with 7 FIRs,” December 2019; Outlook India, “Amrapali Homebuyers Blame MS Dhoni For Their Miseries”; Economic Offences Wing FIR records as reported by multiple outlets)
How the Fraud Mechanism Actually Worked
The Supreme Court judgment described in granular detail how Amrapali built a structure designed to move money rather than build homes.
The group had floated 150 companies. The forensic audit identified 23 of them as created purely to route funds, describing them as consisting of “office boys, persons with no income and dummy companies in which family members and relatives were inducted as members only for few transactions.” The money collected from homebuyers and banks was transferred through these entities, with Rs 2,765 crore confirmed by the promoters themselves as having been transferred out of six projects to other group accounts. Beyond that, an admission was made before the Supreme Court that the builder had been directed to deposit Rs 250 crore in a court-ordered escrow account by June 15, 2018. That order was not complied with. The money could not be produced.
The RERA requirement that 70 percent of homebuyer funds be kept in a dedicated project escrow account was systematically violated. Construction would begin, floors would go up, buyers would visit and feel reassured. Then the money would stop flowing to construction and start flowing out through the shell company network. Projects stalled. Possession dates were revised. Then revised again.
(Source: Supreme Court of India, W.P. (C) No. 940/2017, orders dated February 11, 2019 and July 23, 2019, available at indiankanoon.org; LawLex.org case summary; IBC Laws case record at ibclaw.in)
The Buyers Still Waiting in 2025
The Supreme Court’s July 23, 2019 judgment cancelled Amrapali’s RERA registration, directed the Enforcement Directorate to investigate money laundering, nullified all lease deeds held by the group, and handed over construction to the National Building Construction Corporation. It was described by legal analysts at the time as a landmark verdict providing relief to over 42,000 homebuyers.
Six years later, the construction is still not complete.
NBCC has been working through the incomplete projects in phases since 2019. The Supreme Court has continued monitoring proceedings, with the Court Receiver publishing periodic lists asking buyers to update their contact details and outstanding payment positions. As recently as 2022, fresh interlocutory applications were being heard in the same Writ Petition No. 940 of 2017, covering disputes over land ownership, third-party claims, and project completion timelines.
Buyers who signed agreements in 2011 with a standard 36-month possession promise were still in correspondence with a court-appointed receiver in 2025. Fourteen years.
(Sources: Supreme Court orders in W.P. (C) No. 940/2017, various dates 2019-2022, available at indiankanoon.org; Outlook India coverage of Amrapali proceedings; receiveramrapali.in)
What the Law Says and What It Delivers
RERA has produced measurable improvements since enforcement began. Industry research indicates that project delays in major metros fell by close to 40 percent in the years following strict RERA implementation. Penalty collections from builders have run into hundreds of crores nationally.
But the Amrapali case itself illustrates the gap between what RERA says and what it can enforce. The group held valid RERA registrations across its projects while systematically violating the escrow provisions those registrations were supposed to guarantee. RERA registration was treated by buyers as a signal of trustworthiness. The forensic audit established that it was not one.
The Supreme Court observed during the proceedings that the builders had “breached the trust reposed by home buyers” and that the buyers had been “duped and deprived of their hard-earned money and lifetime savings.” The observation was reproduced across legal publications at the time, including LiveLaw and Bar and Bench, and formed the moral core of a judgment that ran to over 270 pages.
The 2025 RERA amendments added mandatory quarterly third-party audits of project escrow accounts and restrictions on advertising new projects without compliance clearances. Whether these come too late for the buyers whose cases began in 2011 and 2012 is a question the law cannot answer for them.
(Sources: Bar and Bench, July 27, 2019; LiveLaw, July 25, 2019; Supreme Court judgment W.P. (C) No. 940/2017)
What Buyers Can Do Right Now
The Supreme Court’s Amrapali receivership process remains open. Buyers in any Amrapali project who have not registered their details with the Court Receiver can do so at receiveramrapali.in. Buyers with outstanding dues can pay through the UCO Bank portal linked on the same site.
For any new property purchase, the minimum verification before paying anything is to check the project’s RERA registration on the relevant state portal. In Uttar Pradesh the portal is up-rera.gov.in. In Maharashtra it is maharera.mahaonline.gov.in. In Delhi it is rera.delhi.gov.in. A valid registration shows the project timeline, the builder’s track record, and any existing complaints against them. It takes under five minutes. Not doing it cost tens of thousands of Indian families the savings of a working lifetime.
Obtain an independent legal opinion on the land title, not from a lawyer recommended by the builder, before signing any agreement. Ask specifically whether the land has clear title, whether it is encumbered, and whether any existing mortgage on the project land could affect buyer rights.
If something has already gone wrong, file a RERA complaint and a consumer court complaint simultaneously. Keep every document: booking confirmation, payment receipts, all correspondence. Join the buyer association for your project. The Amrapali case reached the Supreme Court because buyers filed together. Collective petitions carry weight that individual complaints often cannot.
A Note on This Article
Every named individual in this piece is either the lead petitioner in a Supreme Court writ petition, a named complainant in an FIR reported by national publications, or a named accused in court proceedings. No composite characters have been used. The figures cited are sourced from the Supreme Court judgment of July 23, 2019 in W.P. (C) No. 940/2017, the forensic audit report submitted to that court by auditors Pawan Kumar Aggarwal and Ravinder Bhatia, and reporting by LiveLaw, Bar and Bench, Outlook India, National Herald India, and Zee News, all cited inline above. Readers are encouraged to verify independently at indiankanoon.org using the case number W.P. (C) No. 940/2017.
