What began as a supposed fight against illegal construction in Delhi has ended with the Delhi High Court unmasking a scheme of extortion. A man claiming to be the General Secretary of an RWA, armed with an NGO front and a lawyer by his side, turned the courtroom into a weapon for personal gain.
Justice Mini Pushkarna, visibly alarmed, held that the petitioner, Anil Lodhi, was misusing judicial process not to safeguard public interest but to pressure property owners for money. “A proceeding before a Court is a solemn process for furthering the cause of justice, not a tool for unlawful objectives,” the Court reminded.
For this abuse, Lodhi now faces a penalty of ₹10 lakh. Every future petition filed by him or any NGO linked to him will carry the stamp of this order.
But Lodhi wasn’t acting alone. The Court noticed a striking pattern: most of his petitions were filed through advocate B.L. Gupta. Even more telling, the address of Lodhi’s so-called NGO, Green Gold Earth of World—unregistered, as it turns out—was the same as Gupta’s chamber. A district judge’s inquiry found that chamber locked more often than not, with neighbouring lawyers unsure of how it was even used.
That was enough for the Court to send Gupta’s conduct to the Bar Council of Delhi, asking it to investigate possible violations of professional rules.
The case that exposed all this involved Lodhi’s petition against “unauthorised construction” at three locations in the city. But the buildings in question weren’t even in the area of the RWA he claimed to represent. Property owners alleged Lodhi had approached them demanding money—an allegation the Court found consistent with his history of filing similar petitions.
The ruling painted a picture of repeated misuse: a self-styled social worker cloaked in NGO credibility, a cooperative lawyer providing the courtroom entry pass, and an agenda driven not by civic duty but by coercion.
The Court closed the matter with a blunt assessment—Lodhi came with unclean hands, suppressed facts, and used the justice system as a bargaining chip. Now, instead of extracting money from others, he must pay up within six weeks.
