Shetty, who has multiple restaurants in Mumbai, met Tanna in 2012 through some common friends, the police said. Tanna informed Shetty, who is from Goregaon (West), that his firm Sai Siddhant Developers was carrying out a housing project called Suryakiran Cooperative Housing Society in D N Nagar, Andheri (West).

On visiting the site, Shetty liked the project and decided to buy five flats (701, 702, 703, 706 and 707) from Tanna, the police said. Subsequently, Shetty signed a registration agreement with Sai Siddhant Developers and paid a stamp duty of Rs 30 lakh, he said in his complaint. Shetty said he further paid a total amount of Rs 3.63 crore to Tanna until August 2012 in multiple instalments. This also included some cash payment, Shetty said in his complaint.

Tanna had promised to deliver the flats by 2015 but he did not and kept delaying the deadline, an officer said. Later, Shetty discovered that Tanna had sold three flats (703, 706, and 707) to another person by keeping him in the dark, the FIR stated. He did not deliver possession of the said flats and also did not return the money, thus causing wrongful loss to Shetty, a police officer said.

Shetty then approached the police and on his complaint, the EOW’s housing (fraud) unit-1 on Wednesday registered an FIR and arrested Tanna from his Kandivali residence. Tanna was booked under sections 409 (criminal breach of trust by a public servant, banker, merchant, or agent) and 420 (cheating) of the Indian Penal Code. He was produced before a court on Wednesday and remanded to police custody up to May 22.

EOW officials said that Tanna is facing two more similar housing fraud cases.