Updated at 3:55pm on 3 June 2026 to include response from Rajesh Mamidwar, Konbil Group, for and on behalf of the concerned lessor entities/responding parties.Serious questions continue to surround Bank of Maharashtra’s ₹1,161 crore Pune office lease, with allegations ranging from inflated carpet area and contractual violations to intimidation and post-lease irregularities, even as the Bank has not responded to detailed queries. The outflow of ₹1,161 crore reflects the full lease value, including interest and represents the total outflow from the Bank during the 15-year lease period. We covered
some questions in the first part. This is the second part.
5. The Carpet Area Fraud — 9,142sqft Missing and ₹41.5 Crore in Alleged Excess Payments
US-based investor Vinod Gannu and his family have prepared a detailed spreadsheet comparing RERA Index II records for each of the 31 individual units against the carpet area recorded in the bank's lease deed. The difference is 9,142sqft — an inflation of about 8.36% over the actual carpet area of the 31 units certified by the Real Estate Regulatory Authority (MahaRERA). At the rent rates stipulated in the lease, this translates to an alleged excess payment of ₹41.5 crore flowing from public funds to the lessor entities, for square footage that does not exist in any registered title document.
Bank of Maharashtra defends this discrepancy by arguing that its request for proposal (RFP) defined 'usable carpet area' more broadly than RERA, to include internal partitions, columns, bathrooms and pantries, and that its architect certified the area in accordance with this definition. The Gannu family's rebuttal is both specific and legally grounded.
First, the Bank's own RFP (Clause 4.11) mirrors the RERA 2016 definition so closely that the two are nearly identical, both excluding outer walls, common corridors, lift shafts, lobbies and common staircases. More significantly, the Bank's technical evaluation criteria section specifically requires the area to be stated as 'carpet area as per RERA 2016'. The Bank cannot invoke a broader definition in one section while requiring RERA certification in another.
Second, and more fundamentally, the 31 units are 31 separate, individually titled legal properties. Each has its own Index 2 registration, RERA declaration, title document and individual carpet area certification. There is no such thing as 'the floor' in any title record. When multiple separately titled units are combined for lease purposes, the combined carpet area is, and legally can only be, the sum of the individual RERA-certified carpet areas.
A fresh re-measurement of the combined floor space would improperly include inter-unit walls (which are outer walls of individual units, excluded under any definition), common corridors between units (which belong to the building society, not to individual unit owners), and external bathrooms (similarly common property). The lessor entities do not own these areas. They cannot legally lease them. They certainly cannot charge rent and goods and services tax (GST) on them. Yet, the Bank's lease appears to do exactly that.
The architect's certificate obtained was for floors as a whole, not for the 31 individual units. The Gannus argue that RERA Circular No 4/2017 mandates individual unit certification. The Bank obtained a certificate covering areas that no individual lessor entity owns or can grant rights over.
6. Units Sold Mid-lease without the Bank's Consent — and Parking Charges Paid to an Entity That Owns No Parking
On 12 December 2025, 11 months into the Bank's lease, one of the lessor entities sold four office units (A201, A202, A203, A204) to new buyers. This was done without the Bank's prior written consent, in alleged violation of clause 5 of the lease deed itself, which required the Bank's prior written approval for any transfer or mortgage by the lessor.
The Bank has apparently taken no contractual or legal action in response to this mid-lease transfer of units, on which it is paying rent.
Simultaneously, the Bank continues to pay AK Enterprises over ₹10 crore in parking charges — despite AK Enterprises having no registered two-wheeler parking spaces in the building as per the Index 2 documents attached to the lease deed itself.
7. Fraudulent Post-lease Supplementary Deeds and Loans on Disputed Properties
Six months after the original lease was executed, supplementary deeds (document numbers 15875/2025 and 15876/2025, Haveli 15, Pune) were registered on 10 July 2025, ostensibly to give the Bank exclusive use of common areas of the building.
The Gannu family argues that this post-lease modification was necessitated by the original lease's own deficiency — the original deed failed to adequately cover common area access. More troublingly, the terrace areas described in these supplementary deeds differ from those in the sanctioned drawings, making the registration itself allegedly fraudulent.
On Floor 3A — the Gallop Life Spaces units for which the Gannu family holds the original property documents — the lessor entities allegedly took a loan from Aditya Birla Housing Finance Ltd on the same property after it had already been leased to Bank of Maharashtra. The loan was taken without the original documents, which remain with the Gannu family.
Supporting the loan application was a backdated board resolution — dated 17 days before Gallop Life Spaces was even incorporated as a company, a mathematical impossibility. The resolution also names Preeti Mukesh Lalwani as a partner, a person, according to the Gannu family, who was never a partner in the company or mentioned in any registered document.
The Gannu family also alleges that the syndicate took fraudulent loans from Bajaj Finance against other properties where they are registered partners, without their knowledge, consent, signatures, or any KYC contact from the lender.
8. The Due Diligence That Apparently Found Nothing
The Gannu family alleges that both men are among the principals behind the entities that Bank of Maharashtra selected as its lessor in a 15-year, ₹1,161 crore public commitment. Standard counterparty due diligence by a regulated bank for a transaction of this scale should have surfaced this background. Whether it did — and whether it was acted upon — is among the questions the Bank has declined to answer.
The Intimidation Campaign — As the Family Tells It
After Mr Gannu began raising these issues formally in November 2025, the response from the syndicate was swift, systematic and — if the family's account is accurate — alarming.
Partners refused to provide access to company documents. Bouncers were deployed at registered office addresses to physically prevent entry. The syndicate warned the family, with apparent confidence, that they had strong influence over the Pune police and that any complaints filed would be 'squashed'. When the family approached police stations, they were met with hostility rather than assistance.
In February 2025 — before the lease was even publicly known to the family — during a partners' meeting at Mr Nilawar's Rucha Group office in Pune regarding a separate property dispute, Mr Gannu was physically assaulted when he refused to sign documents being pressed upon him. He had written a pre-emptive intimation to the police before the meeting, warning that an attack might occur. The syndicate filed a counter-complaint alleging that Mr Gannu had attacked them, but his prior written warning caused the case to be reduced to a non-cognisable (NC) complaint. More recently, one of the individuals named in the syndicate's counter-complaint — Sanjay Pekam — came to the family's Pune home and, on video, admitted that his name had been added to the complaint without his knowledge or consent, and that the complaint was false, the Gannu family alleges.
The threats escalated into specific, explicit threats. According to the Gannu family, the syndicate mentioned 'custodial violence', 'encounters', 'car accidents' and people 'falling off buildings'. It also claimed that Mr Nilawar's alleged connections with senior police officers ensured the family's complaints would never be entertained. In February 2026, a notice was sent to Mr Gannu by the economic offences wing (EOW) based on what the family describes as a 'comically vague' complaint. Shockingly, an unauthorised individual's personal Gmail account was copied on the official police notice, in alleged violation of India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act and Maharashtra's police manual. The unauthorised Gmail account, the Gannu family says, belonged to an individual with a criminal history.
Mr Gannu says he also received multiple calls from individuals claiming to be police officers, threatening arrest. When he clarified that he was a US citizen being monitored by the US Embassy and that they would need to contact the Embassy formally, the callers disconnected.
The syndicate, the Gannu family says, is also alleged to be running a coordinated social media campaign through influencers and content creators on X (formerly Twitter), spreading false narratives about the case in an apparent attempt to shape public perception and intimidate the family from continuing to speak out.
The attempted manifestation of the threats escalated the matter first to the family's Connecticut state senator and then to the Connecticut federal delegation. The US Embassy in India has been kept fully informed and has acknowledged that it is monitoring the situation. Given the alleged stranglehold of the syndicate over local law enforcement, the family says they are now pursuing a joint US-India investigation. The criminal complaint, with a full documentary dossier, is being drafted.
The Structural Integrity Question — An Inconsistency in the Bank's Narrative
There is one further inconsistency in the Bank's public communications that deserves attention. Earlier media reporting — including in Moneylife — carried the Bank's narrative that it was moving critical functions out of the Lokmangal headquarters partly due to structural integrity concerns with the ageing building. The Bank's clarification letter, however, describes the Montclaire lease primarily as an expansion to accommodate growing headcount — not a structural safety-driven relocation.
In his first complaint to Bank of Maharashtra’s chairman and managing director (MD) on 25 November 2025, Mr Gannu says, "A bare calculation shows that without goods and services tax (GST), approximately ₹438 crore is being criminally washed away — furniture and fit-outs that should have been amortised in five years have been spread over 15, with 25% compounded interest added every five years, ensuring that an amount meant to become nil keeps growing instead. This criminal waste of funds held in fiduciary capacity will cause irrecoverable loss of public money and bring the bank into severe disrepute."
"The so-called owners offered Bank of Maharashtra the very property they had communicated to me was litigated, and the Bank signed a 15-year lease on it regardless, throwing all norms of due diligence to the wind. Constructing its own property (Lokmangal) would have cost a fraction of ₹538 crore and taken three years at most — the answer to why the Bank chose this lease over construction is, as any common man can see, that this cannot be without a criminal motive in place," he says.
This raises another question. If the Lokmangal building is structurally compromised enough to warrant moving the IT department, data centre, and cybersecurity operations centre out, why are the remaining 450 employees at Lokmangal not also being moved for safety? And if, as the Bank also claims, the Montclaire lease is flexible enough that it can be vacated with just three months' notice — a feature the Bank highlights to downplay financial risk — why did the finance minister of India inaugurate what the Bank simultaneously describes as a temporary, anytime-vacatable facility?
These are not trick questions. They are the kind of questions a vigilant board, a functioning vigilance department, and an attentive regulator should be asking.
Bank of Maharashtra's Response: Silence
Bank of Maharashtra was sent a detailed questionnaire covering every allegation described in this article. The questions were specific, documentable and put in writing. The Bank has not responded.
The questions remain formally on the table. Was a valid power of attorney—PoA actually submitted by all partner entities of all eight lessors? Did the title search cover all 31 individually registered units and specifically identify Mr Gannu's claimed ownership? Did the independent legal audit address the hypothecation, the lender's NOC, and the secured creditor's superior rights? Were units B601 and A702 legitimately part of the original bid or inserted afterwards? Has the Bank reported this matter to the CBI, ED, SFIO, and RBI as mandated under RBI's master directions on fraud risk management? Has the board reviewed the specific documentary allegations now on the public record? Does the Bank have an explanation for the 9,142sqft carpet area discrepancy that does not rely on paying rent on areas the lessor entities do not legally own?
Until these questions are answered, ₹1,161 crore of public money remains committed to a 15-year lease that an American investor family says was executed on their stolen property — built on a disputed title, allegedly rigged through a compromised tender process, and now being defended through a combination of bureaucratic obfuscation and, if the family's account is to be believed, organised intimidation.
Bank of Maharashtra is a public sector institution. Its money is public money. Its silence is not a private matter.
UPDATE:
Rajesh Mamidwar of the Konbil group, responding for and on behalf of the concerned lessor entities, sent a communication on 25 May 2026 — nearly a month after this article was published. As stated in the NOTE appended to our articles, we remain fully willing to publish his version of events in the interest of fair and balanced journalism. His initial response ran to approximately 10,500 words across a 35-page PDF — nearly double the combined length of our articles — which is neither editorially practical to reproduce in full nor in the interest of our readers. We are accordingly publishing below his shortened response of about 2,000 words verbatim, as provided by him.
PDF embedded below...
Clarification Regarding the Bank of Maharashtra – Montclaire Lease Transaction by Moneylife Foundation
(This is the concluding part of a two-part series.)
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NOTE: Moneylife sent a detailed questionnaire to Bank of Maharashtra seeking responses to all allegations described in this article. No response has been received as of the time of publication. The allegations of Vinod Gannu and family are based on their written communications to Moneylife and supporting documents provided by them. The Bank of Maharashtra's position, as stated in its March 2026 clarification letter, has been reported in full and in context throughout this article. The lessor entities named in this article were not separately approached for comment at this stage; Moneylife will update this story if responses are received from any party. The allegations in this article are as yet unproven in a court of law. Bank of Maharashtra, its officials, and the lessor entities are entitled to the presumption of innocence.
