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Wily ways of land grabbers

By: property vertical, Fri Oct 13th, 2006 06:35:02 PM

As the land prices continue to spiral up in Punjab, the appetite of people to take more and more land — both by legal and illegal means— is increasing and land grabbing is becoming more and more sophisticated in Punjab.

Land grabbers, who, run big well-oiled systems, often supported by a clutch of Revenue Department officials and politicians, have been known to devise relatively new modus operandi.

One of such “fool-proof” and oft-used modus operandi is to lay hands on prime properties of old persons and NRIs, which, has been unearthed during preliminary investigations carried by the intelligence department.

Following this modus operandi, shrewd land grabbers, who, allegedly are fully assisted by lower rung Revenue Department officials, first of all pin-point those lands, which, have either been lying unclaimed on account of shifting of base by the aged owners or the ones belonging to those who have shifted offshore.

After detection of such lands, an alleged land grabber connives with some wily revenue official or a deed writer and prepares a fake sale agreement with a person, who, either died long ago or has settled abroad. Old stamp papers are being used to ink such agreements and, hence, old stamp papers are selling in black market. They command a much higher price than their denomination value.

Subsequently, mutation is effected as part of the plan, but this mutation is not duly registered with the Revenue Department for long. Meanwhile, all other requisite papers are prepared by people, who, are a part of the nexus and interestingly, the “selling party” does not know anything about what goes on behind the scene.

Then one fine day, land grabbers finally take “kabza” (possession) of the land. At this point if the genuine owner objects to the possession, the land grabbers or their front men come out with an explanation that they have, in fact, “purchased” the land from a person’s father or grandfather and that he has all requisite documents. While most of the genuine owners prefer to leave the land, the ones, who, try to fight it out have to face long-drawn legal hurdles, particularly, when the other party is in possession of the “documents”.

The situation becomes more complex for them as the original “seller” is either dead or settled abroad from where he or she cannot come to fight a protracted legal battle.

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