MUMBAI: Abhishek Lodha, the owner of Macrotech Developers, and the elder son of senior BJP leader and a minister in the Maharashtra government Mangal Prabhad Lodha, has accused his younger brother Abhinandan Lodha, who runs his realty business under the brand name, The House of Abhinandan Lodha, of forgery and fraud.
The younger brother has, however, denied all charges.
The Lodha brothers have been fighting for years after the real estate company then known as Lodha Developers was divided between them in 2015, and finally they had smoked the peace pipe in February after their mother made a public appeal to them to behave.
However the elder was on short fuse today and field a forgery and fraud complaint against the House of Abhinandan Lodha (HoABL). Being a listed entity, Macrotech has also informed the exchanges about the same.
Abhinandan is accused of deceiving his customers by selling the projects as Lodha—something the break-up did not allow him to do. The name Lodha is a trademark owned by Macrotech Developers.
HoABL has pulled off a major scam, the Marcotech said in the filing and termed the act as not only a craftily planned scheme, but also a deep rooted conspiracy.
The scam began in 2022, when Varpan Land Developers, a lesser known firm of HoABL, passed a resolution in its board meeting on July 22, 2022, to change its name to Lodha Landbuild Infrastructure or Lodha Bhoomi Nirman.
In his bid to ensure that the name change does not raise any red flags, HoABL obtained a resolution of Macrotech which was dated July 24, 2022 and allowed formation of four new companies viz-- Lodha Landbuild Infrastructure, Lodha Bhoomi Nirman, Lodha Land Design Infra, and Lodha Pictorials Landinfra. These four companies were allowed to use the Lodha trademark and were to be registered with RoC’s central registration centre in Manesar, Haryana.
The resolution was signed by Ashwani Kumar, an independent director of Macrotech and a former chairman & managing director of the public sector Dena Bank, said the filing.
Within days of obtaining this resolution, which paved the way for use of Lodha name, on August 3, 2022 Ashwinder Matharu, chief of operations, strategy and investments at HoABL, raised a service request with RoC to change the name of Varpan Land Developers to Lodha Landbuild Infrastructure. A day later, the RoC gave its nod to change the name.
The very next month, HoABL started using Lodha Landbuild Infrastructure to obtain permissions and market their Goa project.
“ The intent seems to be to deceive the customers of HoABL into believing that they are dealing with Lodha, the country’s number one real estate company. As of now it is known that at least one of the HoABL projects in Goa was sold using this name between September 2022 and April 2023.
“And once the sales reached a critical mass, HoABL in April 2023, changed the name of the company once again to HOABL Landbuild Infrastructure, to ensure that the misuse of the Lodha name would pass undetected,” says the fling.
But Macrotech believes that “the July 2022 resolution which allowed change of name to Lodha Landbuild Infrastructure and use of trademark Lodha, was forged because there was no board meeting of Macrotech Developers Ltd on July 24, 2022.”
Apart from forging Macrotech’s letter and seal, HoABL also forged Macrotech’s independent director Ashwani Kumar’s identity by forging his PAN card with a different photograph and signature. This forged document was used to authenticate the July 24, 2022 Macrotech resolution to the RoC to change the name of Varpan Land Developers to Lodha Landbuild Infrastructure.
Macrotech has said they are exploring options to initiate legal action against HoABL.
In a separate statement, the Lodha Group said, “it is a clear case of forgery, fraud and impersonation with an intent to cheat and deceive. The concerned entities and individuals have created a completely fake resolution of Macrotech Developers, including a false letterhead, false company stamp, false board meeting date, and content which we have never approved, with a false sign of our independent director Ashwani Kumar which is nowhere close to his actual signature.
“We are shocked at the extent of the conspiracy and how the systems of the government were misused,” Lodha said.
When contacted, denying all allegations, a spokesperson of Lodha Ventures (HoAL), told TNIE that they “do not admit any of the allegations of fraud and forgery sought to be attributed to us.”