Hyderabad: A realtor has been arrested for cheating more than 1,000 people, including several NRIs and top government officials, while earning around Rs 25 crore from the act.

The accused, Y. Prabhakar Sharma, would lure people from the Brahmin community, promising them an exclusive Brahmin housing colony named “Veda Gayatri Agraharam” in Chegur village of Kothur Mandal.

He sold plots to several people with fake layouts, and earned more than Rs 25 crore, said the Mahabubnagar police.

Sharma, a native of Guntur, who resides at Kothapet in Dilsukhnagar, ran an aggressive advertising campaign on TV and newspapers to earn the trust of the Brahmin community in AP and Telangana.

“He hired vehicles and provided transportation from his office in New Nagole, LB Nagar to ‘Veda Gayatri Agraharam’ at Chegur village for sightseeing. He arranged lunch and conducted ‘homam’ at the site,” said B. Gangadhar, inspector of Shadnagar rural, who investigated the case.

Sharma promised prospective clients that the area would be exclusively for Brahmins and would be a “hi-tech agraharam”.

“He promised facilities like Vedagayatri Goshala with Ongole cows, Veda Pathashala, Sri Gayatri Gyanapeetam, Veda Gayatri IAS Academy, Kalyana Mandapam for performing Brahmin marriages, Brahmana Old Age Home, a modern corporate hospital as well as a homoeopathic hospital, and 40 feet-wide roads with solar powered lights,” said the inspector. He showed a forged layout of more than 100 acre though he did not have that much land.

“According to his plans, he had purchased 36 acre in Yenkammaguda Chegur in 2011 from the land owners and had started an office in New Nagole.

Without getting any legal approval for his layouts, he announced a scheme of registering the plots in the name of the customers by taking 20 per cent of the plot cost as advance and the remaining amount through 100 EMIs of Rs 5,000 each. He collected lakhs from each customers and earned EMIs too,” added Mr Gangadhar.

Whenever the victims would approach him, he would delay the process, and later started threatening them.

“After we came to know about the fraud, we confronted Prabhakar Sharma. He threatened us with dire consequences,” said Siva Rama Krishna, a victim from Dammaiguda.