KOCHI: Padmanabhan T N still remembers when he booked his apartment in Kochi. It was 2014, and like thousands of non-resident Indians (NRIs), he dreamed of eventually settling down back home. Working in Dubai and Muscat at the time, he invested a big chunk of his life savings in an apartment at Riva, a project of Nucleus Premium Properties Pvt Ltd in Edappally.
What followed was an 11-year ordeal marked by uncertainty, courtroom battles, and the constant fear that the money — and the dream — was lost forever. “We thought we would be left with nothing,” Padmanabhan says. “At one stage, liquidation looked inevitable. If that had happened, the investors would have got nothing at all.”
Padmanabhan was among the more than 200 home…