Sunday, August 13, 2006
Guard against forged documents
A woman got her share of about 2,400 square feet of vacant land in a prime area in Chennai during a family partition. However, she did not construct a house for long years, as the `prime piece of land' had no approach road. The rear portion of her land was a poromboke property.
After several years, when the woman's husband went abroad for three years for work, the couple decided to build their dream home on the vacant land. Recently, she visited her property to clean up the place, but was baffled. A group of persons had encroached the land behind her property and allegedly trespassed into her land too.
When she inquired into the antecedents of the "trespassers", the reply was not only vague but came in a threatening tone. Unmindful of the threat, she approached the custodians of law and preferred a complaint. .
Preliminary inquiries revealed that the trespassers had allegedly connived with the staff of the Registration Department locally to prepare fake documents. Soon, investigators found that a bogus power of attorney had been registered on the aforesaid land with the authorities concerned. The woman had never given such a power to anyone, investigation showed.
While investigating officials said such cases of impersonation or preparing forged documents had become the order of the day, the State Government's recent guidelines for registration had come as a relief to law-abiding citizens.
The Government has made it mandatory that the photograph of both the buyer and seller should be affixed in the documents and all registration will henceforth be made only in the presence of both the parties - the buyer and seller. This might not signal an end to committing such frauds but law makers feel that the right beginning has been made.
