MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of Madras High Court refused to quash a criminal case registered against five persons for allegedly cheating a septuagenarian woman who is an Overseas Resident of India (OCI) in Singapore, by misappropriating her properties under the guise of providing legal assistance.
However, the court quashed the harassment and criminal intimidation case lodged by the woman against two more persons, apprehending that it may divert attention from the main issue. The court instead ordered police protection for the woman, besides instructing the concerned sub registrars, immigration authorities, forensic and income tax departments to cooperate with the District Crime Branch (DCB), Thanjavur, in the investigation by furnishing the required documents without delay.
Justice B Pugalendhi gave the directions recently on a batch of petitions filed by the accused persons seeking to quash the criminal cases registered against them by the Thanjavur DCB and the Tamil University Police Station in 2025 and 2026, respectively.
The woman, S Magamatha, claimed in her complaint that her late husband, Shaik Sirajudeen, was a businessman and had several properties worth Rs 700 crores in and around Thanjavur. After he died in 2015, one of the accused, Sumathi, approached her by claiming to be her husband's former employee and offered to help her resolve the legal disputes relating to her husband's properties in India. She and the other accused, including advocates, fraudulently obtained her signatures on blank papers and some legal documents, and also made her executive power deeds in their names, using which the accused persons had sold her properties and misappropriated the sale amount. The DCB police also told the court that a sum of Rs 4.12 crore has been transferred from Magamatha's account to the bank accounts of the accused.
Observing that the materials make out a prima facie case against the accused, requiring investigation, the judge passed the above order.
