The officials of the TN Housing Board, who were instrumental in executing a sale deed in respect of a property at Sadayankuppam village, Ambattur in Tiruvallur district, in the name of a dead person by impersonation, were lambasted by the Madras High Court recently.
This case exposed the fraud played by the officials of the Board in collusion with the land grabbers, by executing a sale deed in favour of a dead person without the knowledge of the legal representatives of the original allottee, Justice KK Sasidharan observed, and directed the DGP to ensure that the investigation on the case was transferred to the CB CID and completed as quickly as possible.
The judge was allowing a writ petition from M Fathima Beevi praying for a direction to the Board to cancel a sale deed dated November 11, 2008 in respect of the property in question, measuring 2,400 sq ft and to execute the sale deed in her favour.
According to petitioner, a widow, the Board allotted the property to her husband Sheik Salahudeen in March, 1989. He died in 1996 leaving behind his mother, petitioner, a son and a daughter. She applied for transfer of the property in her name. The TNHB in Anna Nagar transferred the allotment of the plot in her name in February, 1999. After remitting the balance amount, she applied for execution of the sale deed in January, 2010. As there was no response and the officials avoided her, she applied for encumbrance certificate (EC). To her shock she found in the EC that the sale deed for the plot in question had been executed by the manager of the Anna Nagar branch of the Board in her husband’s name in November, 2008, nearly 12 years after his death. Some one had impersonated her husband, she contended in her writ petition.
After going through the files, Justice Sasidharan found that petitioner’s allegation of impersonation was true. ``The writ petition is a classic example as to how the officials of the TNHB conduct the affairs of the instrumentality of the State and the modus operandi of black sheeps working in the Board.’’
It was very clear that the officials of the Board assisted in commission of forgery and impersonation. The executive engineer in his counter stated in a very casual manner that after conclusion of the criminal proceedings already initiated by the police, action would be taken to cancel the sale deed and to issue a fresh one in favour of the petitioner. The petitioner was already 56 years old and it would take years for issuing the sale deed. The indifferent attitude of the Board would encourage land grabbing. They would continue to cheat people in case these kinds of illegal activities were permitted and immediate criminal and disciplinary actions were not initiated, the judge said, and directed the Sub-Registrar in Trivotriyur to cancel the document dated November 2008 within a week and issue a fresh one in favour of petitioner within three weeks.