Now, fake civil suits used to grab land

Bengaluru is no stranger to land scams but the latest modus operandi misuses the legal process to forcibly evict rightful landowners from their own property

Bengaluru has been notorious as a hub of real estate scams for many years now. But novel ways adopted by fraudsters to grab land show that loopholes in the system and possible connivance of officials are only becoming a bigger problem. Even with Covid keeping a modest check on sky-rocketing real estate prices around Bengaluru, the incentive to cheat is compelling.

Indeed, the spreading rash of scams shows that reforms taken up by the administration after land scandals in 2004-05 have had little effect. From forging land grant documents to getting fake franking seals on property papers, there is no end to the methods used by the fraudsters involved in land grabbing.

Recently, the High Court of Karnataka detected a hitherto unknown modus operandi that was being used by a network to usurp valuable properties.

The HC revealed that the fraudsters behind land grabbing have started hoodwinking courts by way of filing fake civil suits. With a set of forged documents, the fraudsters would file suit for eviction against persons, who are not connected to the property.

Also read: How land grabbing is perpetrated

Within days of issuance of notice both the parties file a compromise petition and get an order of eviction. All the while, the real owner is left out in the cold.

While quashing one such decree and execution, the single judge bench of Justice Krishna S Dixit observed that such “fraud, forgery and fabrication ordinarily do not happen without the involvement of insiders”.

Justice Dixit further observed that, “Strangely, a compromise decree has been obtained on 31.05.2018, absolutely without any explanation for this rocket speed, even when the ink on the pleadings had not yet dried up. What intrigues the mind of this court is that the learned Judge of the Court below (Small Causes Court) has not given a thought to this doubtful swiftness with which the parties to the suit have acted.”

The case before the High Court involved the property belonging to a company named Harilal Bhikabhai and Company, a registered partnership firm with its office at Mamulpet in Bengaluru.

The company had been in possession of a property by virtue of two registered lease deeds of 1954.

The owners of the property, who were in possession of the property for more than 60 years, were in for a shock on March 12, 2019, when the court bailiff with the policemen knocked on their doors.

Also read: TDR certification and land scams

The officials handed an order of decree and execution passed by a Small Causes Court in favour of a person who was in no way connected to the property.

The CID's preliminary investigation reveals that there are more than 100 such fake civil suits filed before the Courts of Small Causes in Bengaluru alone.

According to senior advocates, fake civil suits are a major concern since it involves the courts to get an irrefutable right over the property. An official privy to the investigation, though refusing to divulge any information about the CID probe, said that there are fake civil suits wherein real owners were made the defendants, but clandestinely.

The advocates representing the real owners produce a forged compromise petition and get a decree.

New modus operandi

With this new modus operandi of land grabbing coming to light, it is again time to look at the land scams that the IT capital has witnessed in the last few decades.

Under criticism of inaction towards cases of land grabbing and encroachment, successive state governments appointed several committees right from 2006.

These committees included a Joint Legislative Committee headed by Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) A T Ramaswamy in 2007, followed by a task force for recovery of public land and its protection headed by retired IAS officer V Balasubramanian in 2009, and a House committee on tank encroachment in 2017 headed by the then speaker of the Assembly, K B Koliwad.

The A T Ramaswamy report said that as of that year (2007), some 27,336 acres of government land was encroached upon in Bengaluru Urban district alone.

The involvement of revenue officials, especially quasi judicial authorities under the Karnataka Land Revenue Act, was evident in most of the cases of land grabbing.

With these officers having little accountability, the orders passed by the quasi judicial officers reach finality, more so when government lands are usurped using fake documents.

The agencies such as Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), Karnataka Industrial Areas Development Board (KIADB), and Bangalore Metropolitan Region Development Authority (BMRDA) are also to be blamed for inaction when it comes to restoring government lands.

As the reports submitted by the successive committees gather dust, there has been no substantial action on the ground to clear the encroachments.

Special courts

In the meanwhile, the state government in 2011 enacted the Karnataka Land Grabbing Prohibition Act, which intended to set up special courts to try cases of land grabbing.

In a recent order in January 2021, a division bench of the High Court directed the state government to immediately set up additional special courts, preferably in all the districts. The reason was the number of cases pending for adjudication.

The court said that special courts set up under the Act are located only in Bengaluru City, and a litigant is often made to travel all the way to the capital for legal proceedings. The special court (in 2020) had admitted around 7,800 cases under the Act, while around 4,400 cases were still pending adjudication.

Senior counsel and former Advocate General Ashok Harnahalli said it is high time the state government set up a digitised mechanism to alert it about any transaction related to a government property.

“Fake civil suits were there before, but not to this magnitude. In my experience, cases involving government lands are not properly defended as there is hardly any accountability. The state needs an Estate Department where all the records pertaining to government lands and buildings are maintained. This apart, there has to be a two-fold approach towards the protection of government lands. The digitisation of all the government lands and buildings is necessary and also there has to be frequent physical verification at the district level,” he said.

The experts in the real estate industry concede this fact and say that land sharks are exploiting the fact that land titles in most parts of the country are vague and digitised land records are still far from being a reality.

“Plots with long and convoluted title histories are especially vulnerable. Landowners — especially absentee owners — should protect their assets by completing all necessary formalities and paying all outstanding dues to stake their formal claim on the land," Prashant Thakur, Director and Head - Research, ANAROCK Property Consultants said.

“In many cases, we have seen that people who have inherited land tend to be lax about these aspects. The plot should be properly registered in the rightful owner's name. A compound wall should be erected along with at least a temporary structure and adequate signage which clearly conveys ownership and registration details as noted in the land records,” he said.

(With inputs from Chaitanya Swamy H M, Manjunath Hebbar and Mahesh Kulkarni)