Ot­to Car­ring­ton

A hous­ing de­vel­op­er fac­ing charges of ut­ter­ing forged doc­u­ments and ob­tain­ing sums of $1,647,000 and $1,665,000 through fraud­u­lent means, has been grant­ed bail with sure­ty in the amount of $250,000.

Mahin­dra Boodram, of Val­sayn, was grant­ed bail on the charges when he ap­peared be­fore a Mas­ter of the High Court on Wednes­day.

The case cen­ters around a de­vel­op­ment in Cunu­pia called Spring­field Gar­dens.

Ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28 fam­i­lies oc­cu­py homes across two of the phas­es, with 14 lots per phase.

A pro­posed third phase com­pris­ing 17 lots is cur­rent­ly un­der con­struc­tion.

Home­own­ers claim that the first two phas­es were con­struct­ed with­out nec­es­sary ap­provals from the Ch­agua­nas Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion or the Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment.

They al­so al­lege that the doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed, in­clud­ing com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates, were fraud­u­lent and not au­tho­rised by the is­su­ing in­sti­tu­tions.

Home­own­ers said they found them­selves in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, with­out com­ple­tion cer­tifi­cates and fac­ing chal­lenges with mort­gages, as in­ter­est rates in­creased due to de­creased house val­u­a­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, they said, the cor­po­ra­tion had the le­gal au­thor­i­ty to place a hold on or con­demn the homes.

Boodram, who de­nied the claims made by the cor­po­ra­tion and res­i­dents, will re­turn to court on Oc­to­ber 15 next year.

As part of his bail con­di­tions, he must re­port to a po­lice sta­tion on the first Sat­ur­day of every month.