Rastogi, who presently stays in a government flat in Anushakti Nagar, has two more years for his retirement from the service and will have to move out of his flat by November 2010. “I wanted to lead a post-retirement life in my own house. Hence, I had booked a 1306 sq ft flat with Aditya Enterprises in 2005 through a bank. According to the owners of the firm —Rajkumar Khushlani and Arun Patil — the cost of the flat was Rs 30 lakh. They asked me to give Rs 17 lakh as the booking amount. My flat was on the 11th floor. But they didn’t have the necessary permission to construct the building beyond 10th floor. So, they were unwilling to sign an agreement,” said Rastogi who possesses the receipts of those payments.

For last two years, Rastogi had been regularly visiting the building site. He was, however, unable to contact the owners of the firm. But when he finally managed to reach them in April 2007, they had allegedly informed him that they had sold off his flat.

“I filed a police complaint under the Maharashtra Ownership Flats Act with the Tilak Nagar police in 2007 following which Khushlani and Patil offered to give the money back to me in with 25 per cent interest. However, I didn’t revert to them on this and filed a writ petition in the court. The firm produced copies of a power of attorney and a memorandum of understanding which mentioned that I had handed over the responsibility of carrying out all transactions of my flat to one Satish Nair. The documents bore my signature that was forged, my name and a photograph of Nair, but it didn’t have signatures of witnesses,” said Rastogi. He also said that he didn’t know Nair.

After the court suggested that he had filed a criminal complaint, Rastogi approached the Tilak Nagar police in September. “We have registered an FIR in the case on December 30 and booked Khushlani, Patil and Nair for cheating and forgery. We will be conducting an inquiry before arresting them and are in the process of taking handwriting samples from the complainant and the accused,” said Police Inspector Rajendra Kulkarni of Tilak Nagar police station.