And on the ground floor was the office for his ambitious Infocity Project. Barot denied the presence of any such bathing facility in his penthouse no. 1002. You can still check on the spot, half of the building still exists,'' he added. Police investigations, however, tell a different story. The police and a team from the Delhi-based National Council for Building Material also inspected the building.
Investigations suggest that pressure from atop the building caused it to crumble.
But then, Barot is no stranger to controversy. He along with his NRI brother, US-based real estate developer Dilip Barot, is steering the Infocity Project, touted by the Gujarat Government as the State's answer to Chandrababu Naidu's IT revolution. No less than Union Home Minister L.K. Advani had flagged off the project. The Barot brothers are close to Minister of State for Information Technology Bimal Shah. Interestingly, their company, Creative Choice, was the only bidder left in a global tender floated for the Infocity Project in 1999.