Vijay Verma, the property dealer, was arrested by Crime Branch's Economic Offences Wing on Wednesday following his questioning and after “establishing” his role in the scam, Joint Commissioner (Crime) Amulya Patnaik said on Thursday.

“Verma was called for questioning yesterday after evidence cropped up against him. After his questioning, we decided to arrest him,” Patnaik said.

The property dealer allegedly allowed his premises to be used for filling up application forms for DDA flats.

He also allegedly helped “selling a flat obtained in the name of a proxy-applicant even before its possession was given to the applicant”, Patnaik said.

This is the eighth arrest in the case of a cartel of property dealers entering into a conspiracy to corner DDA flats reserved for SC/STs by fraudulently applying in the name of people belonging to these communities.

The seventh arrest was on April 28, of one Jeet Ram, a cashier of shopping mall owner. Ram allegedly provided Rs 15 lakh to Gautam for committing the fraud. Gautam also issued post-dated cheques as a security in favour of Jeet Ram.

The DDA, on December 6, conducted a draw of lots for over 5,000 flats for which over 5.67 lakh people filed applications. Police registered a total of three FIRs after allegations of rigging were made in the draw.

The first case was registered on January 9 on a complaint of a Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan) resident accusing L N Meena of obtaining his signatures on two forms after misleading him.

Later, two more cases were registered on January 17 and 19 invoking provisions of cheating, forgery, using forged documents as genuine and other sections of the IPC.

Police have earlier arrested Deepak Kumar, who allegedly blew the lid off the scam after he fell out with some real-estate agents, Gautam, Raju Ram, Laxmi Narayan Meena, Vijay Pal and Suresh Kumar Meena.

Two others, Satbir Singh and Dinesh Dral, were arrested in connection with providing fake documents.

Police have on April eight filed a chargesheet in the case against five accused seeking their prosecution for getting allotted 57 dwellings through fraudulent means.

Running into over 7,000 pages, the chargesheet said the accused had filed as many as 2,000 applications in the names of “poor persons” to corner maximum number of flats in the draw of lots.

Police sought prosecution of the accused for allegedly preparing fake documents, cheating, destruction of evidence, forgery and criminal conspiracy. The maximum punishment in this case could be life imprisonment.

Verma, a resident of Paschim Vihar, is running a Lucky Properties, a property dealing office in Shalimar Bagh.

He actively participated in the crime by letting his office premises to be used by Vijay Pal, Suresh and Deepak Kumar for the purpose of filling-up the DDA forms, Patnaik alleged.