Recover amount paid to man who forged sale deed: Madras high court

Chennai: The Madras high court has directed the Chennai District Collector to take action for recovery of the award amount paid to a person, who allegedly forged and fabricated documents and claimed title over the property, which was acquired by the highways department for widening the road in Porur from another person.

Justice N. Anand Venkatesh gave the directive while disposing of a petition filed by V. Vanitha.

Petitioner’s counsel Abudukumar submitted that the petitioner’s father-in-law Sampath owned and possessed vast extent of landed properties in Porur village, Kancheepuram district (Presently Ambattur Taluk, Thiruvallur district). He had gifted 0.18 cents comprised in Survey No.188/25 by way of Sridhana deed to his sister Mangalammal. During the year 1993, for the purpose of road widening the front portion of the property measuring about 40 square meter of land in Survey No.188/1A was acquired by the state highways department and appropriate award was also passed. He bequeathed the remaining portion of land in Survey No.188/1A in favour of the petitioner’s husband. While so, the daughter-in-law and grand daughter of Mangalammal started claiming right over the property on the guise that the property in Survey No.188/1A and the property in Survey No.188/25 were one and the same and being aggrieved with the same, the parties have initiated appropriate civil suit for appropriate relief before the civil court concerned, he added.

Abudukumar said since there was dispute over title of the property and a suit was pending before the District Munsif, Poonamallee, the Acquisition Officer had in 2011 directed the compensation amount to be deposited in the civil court. While so, nearly after six years, the petitioner came to know that based on the sale deed submitted by one Shenbagaraman, the officer reopened and reviewed his own order and without issuing any notice to the petitioner, held that Shenbagaraman had established his title to the land in question and has paid the entire compensation amount of `23.21 lakh to him.

Therefore, the petitioner filed a petition and the high court had on December 21, 2018 directed the Chennai District Collector to conduct a detailed enquiry in respect of disbursement of compensation amount to Shenbagaraman and in the inquiry, if the collector finds that the acquisition officer concerned acted in collusion with Shenbagaraman, take suitable action including filing of criminal complaint against the erring official concerned, besides recovery of the amount from Shenbagaraman within 8 weeks.

However, since no action was taken, the petitioner has filed the present petition, he added.

In his present order, the judge said in spite of specific direction given by this court, the collector has not acted upon the same and till date, neither the criminal action nor the proceedings to recover the amount from the counter party has been initiated.

“In view of the above, this petition is disposed of with a direction to the collector to immediately act upon the directions given by this court and take action for the recovery of money from the counter party and to initiate
criminal proceedings, within six weeks,” the judge added.