ED Conducts 14 Premises Searches in Rajendra Lodha's Money Laundering Case

MUMBAI: On Wednesday, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) conducted searches at 14 different locations in Mumbai and its surrounding areas. These searches were part of an ongoing investigation into a money-laundering and cheating case involving developer Rajendra Lodha, who was a board member of Lodha Developers Limited.

The ED's Mumbai unit carried out the searches based on a complaint filed by the company. Rajendra Lodha was arrested by the police in September on charges including criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, and criminal intimidation. The police had registered the case under various sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.

ED sources revealed that the searches were not only focused on Rajendra Lodha but also involved other individuals from the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) who were accused of being accomplices in the cheating case. The ED also recorded the statement of a suspect who is the brother of a former legislator from Thane.

According to the First Information Report (FIR) registered in September with the N M Joshi Marg police in Mumbai, Rajendra Lodha is accused of selling several Lodha properties at significantly undervalued prices, resulting in a loss of ₹85 crore to the company. Along with Lodha, several others were booked, including his son Sahil, B Narsana, N Wador, R Narsana, N Menon, N Desai, A Kamble, S Singh, and Vinod Patil. Some of these individuals were employees of the company and are alleged to have assisted Lodha in his fraudulent activities.

Rajendra Lodha began his career with Lodha Developers Limited in 1990 and became a director of the company in 2015. In 2021, he was promoted and given the right to purchase land for the group, although he was not authorized to sell it. In July 2025, the Lodha group discovered that Rajendra Lodha owned more property than his known sources of income, leading to a request for him to provide details. Following this, he resigned from his position.

One of the alleged under-valuations involved a 5,900-square-metre plot that Lodha sold in August 2023 to S Jadhav for ₹88 lakh. The property is expected to increase in value due to the proposed Virar-Alibaug Multi-Modal Corridor Project, which will pass close to it. Jadhav allegedly resold the land within ten months for ₹10.88 crore.

In another instance, in 2022, while Lodha was a partner with an infotech entity and still working with Lodha Developers, he sold a land parcel in Bhopar village in Panvel for ₹2.75 crore. The actual value of the land was ₹9 crore, causing a loss of ₹6.25 crore to the company.