Fraudulent sale deeds scam of much larger magnitude than imagined earlier
By Arun Pratap Singh
Dehradun, 31 Aug: Previously it had been imagined that there were a handful of land records which had been manipulated in the Sub Registrar’s office in Dehradun. However, as the investigation makes progress, it is now being revealed that the scam regarding records manipulation is of a much larger magnitude and that it has been going on since a very long time. The investigation has further revealed that even 150 year old land records have been manipulated and replaced with forged documents regarding inheritance and land sale.
Land records for the year 1958 have been received from the sub-registrar’s office of Saharanpur by the Uttarakhand government, and it has been observed that the binding of the record books has been broken open. The records in question pertain to sale of 0.43 acres of Mouja Brahmanwala’s land, where the original records seem to have been replaced with forged documents and the index and the entry table also show overwriting. These documents have been received in 31 boxes from Saharanpur. More documents could also have been replaced with forged documents but this is yet to be investigated. Two new cases have been registered today. It may be recalled that five cases are already registered so far regarding tampering of the land records. These cases were filed regarding the tampering of the registered registries which took place in 1958. The Kotwali police have registered a case and started investigation, while the case has been filed on behalf of Assistant Inspector General Registration Sandeep Srivastava. Most of the cases of land record manipulation related to the Dehradun districts detected so far relate to the year 1958, which simply means that the investigation is still at preliminary stage and records of other years are yet to be checked. This also indicates that all these manipulations in land records was being carried out in a very organised manner with open connivance of the officials from revenue department, and from the Sub Registrar office with the help of some very senior lawyers in Dehradun as well as in Saharanpur. One senior lawyer Kamal Virmani has so far been arrested in this case but the involvement of more lawyers from Dehradun and Saharanpur is very likely in other cases which are yet to be exposed.
It is also pertinent to point out here that these 1958 land records had been brought in 31 boxes in December last year. So it is highly likely that the records were tempered with after their arrival in Dehradun Sub Registrar’s office. The police suspect that records might have been manipulated in several volumes of the registers. At present volume number 549 has been found to have been tempered with.
