Gurugram : The Enforcement Directorate has seized high-end luxury vehicles, central servers, hard drives, and project files following a three-day search operation targeting TDI Group chairman Ravinder Taneja in connection with the Manesar land scam probe.
The searches, conducted by the agency’s Chandigarh Zonal Office under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, covered residential and business premises across New Delhi and Mohali. Enforcement officials confirmed that documents recovered during the raids also point to suspected financial and regulatory irregularities across several other real estate projects executed by the builder.
The search operation began at TDI House in Sector 119, Mohali, where officers backed by security personnel entered the premises and secured digital devices, including employee mobile phones and central data servers. The search ran continuously over three days, requiring investigating teams to stay overnight as senior company executives underwent questioning.
Among the seized assets treated as suspected proceeds of crime are luxury cars valued at roughly ₹8 crore, including models from Range Rover, Mercedes-Benz, and Lexus.
According to the Enforcement Directorate, TDI Group acted as an intermediary in a land flipping scheme operating between 2005 and 2007. The agency alleges that the group used three front companies—Indo Asian Construction, NCR Properties, and Divya Jyoti Enterprises—to purchase nearly 33 acres of land from local farmers at depressed prices after state acquisition notices created panic over low compensation. Once the state acquisition process was allowed to lapse, TDI resold the land to the Atul Bansal-led ABW Group at steep profit margins.
The case traces back to an August 2004 notification by the Haryana government to acquire over 900 acres in Manesar, Naurangpur, and Lakhnoula for an industrial township. Fearing low government payouts, farmers sold roughly 400 acres to private builders at throwaway rates before the state dropped the acquisition in 2007, allowing developers to hoard and resell the land at inflated commercial prices.
In March 2018, the Supreme Court nullified the land transfers, calling the entire process a fraud. Enforcement officers are currently auditing the seized digital devices and bank transactions of various TDI entities, with further action depending on the outcome of the forensic analysis.
