The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of the Delhi Police has arrested one of the main figures in an alleged scam in which around 150 people were induced to put their money in a purported project in Dholera Smart City in Gujarat with the promise of extraordinary returns.The accused in the sprawling scam worth an estimated Rs 2,700 crore allegedly used a doctored video that appeared to show Prime Minister Narendra Modi extolling the project as his “dream”, police said on Friday.Jugal Kishore, 57, who was arrested in Shahdara in Delhi on Wednesday, represented a company called Nexa Evergreen Private Limited, which he claimed had a project in Dholera.“A joint complaint was filed by Mrs Neha Kumari from Karawal Nagar in Delhi and 97 other complainants against Nexa Evergreen Pvt Ltd and its office bearers in 2023. It was alleged that accused Jugal Kishore and Vinod Kumar represented themselves as directors of the company and assured investors that on their investment they would receive assured weekly returns and be allotted plots in Dholera…,” Additional CP (EOW) Amrutha Gugoloth said.Kishore and other accused allegedly showed a presentation for the victims of the fraud over Zoom, which included doctored videos of the PM, police said. The victims were promised a 3% monthly return on their “investment”, which they would get every Tuesday in their bank accounts, apart from plots of land in the smart city.They were also promised Royal Enfield motorcycles, laptops, and mobile phones upon reaching certain milestones in the project, police said.The victims told police that they were asked to install an app from Google Play, on which they could track their returns every Tuesday, an official said. After functioning smoothly initially, the app crashed on January 23, 2023. The website of the company would not open, and Kishore would not take the calls of the investors.Story continues below this ad“Accused persons including chief manager [of the company] Ranveer Singh Bijarania and other office bearers had absconded, their website had been taken down and the investors’ application had been disabled. FIRs of the same pattern were also registered in Sikar (Rajasthan) and Gwalior (Madhya Pradesh), almost in the same timeframe,” Gugoloth said.Investigations suggested the investors had been victims of a Ponzi scheme, a type of investment fraud in which older investors are paid high returns using the money collected from newer investors.“The group operated across the country with its head office at Ahmedabad. Accused Subhash Bijarania, an ex-serviceman, and Ranveer Singh Bijarania, are directors of Nexa Evergreen Pvt Ltd and other group entities. They initiated a scheme enticing the public to invest in their township project named “Nexa Evergreen Project” in Dholera,” Gugoloth said.Jugal Kishore and Vinod Kumar ran a branch of the company in Shahdara, police said. Kishore was a director in Nexa Limited and another company called Oak Developers, police said. The bulk of the alleged duped money was received in accounts of these companies, and was used to buy land worth more than Rs 2,000 crore in Dholera, police said.Story continues below this ad“The Nexa group purchased approximately 1,200 bighas of land in the Dholera area… As per information verified from Sub-Registrar, Dholera, about 168 acres of land has been identified so far,” Gugoloth said.Police said Kishore is a Class 5 dropout who worked as a part-time priest and part-time property dealer in the Vishwas Nagar area of Shahdara until 2022. He met Ranveer Bijarania and Subhash Bijarania through a friend named Vinod Chaudhary.“He (Kishore) opened an office in Vishwas Nagar and started collecting funds under the schemes of Nexa group. He is the authorised signatory in the bank accounts of the firms where funds were collected from victims. He sold his house and left the area and was living with his relatives at the time of his arrest,” Gugoloth said.