If you are planning to buy a plot of land in south Chennai and its peripheries, then exercise maximum caution before investing in the property as it could be a plot usurped through fraudulent documents. In the past four months, 17 cases of land registrations through double documentation worth of Rs 200 crore have been unearthed in the sub-registrar offices located in the southern parts of the city. Land sharks have been eyeing no man’s land, vacant plots including the government’s poramboke to make a fortune in the realty market.

All cases have been reported in the sub-registrar offices under the purview of the South Chennai District Registrar. The cases have come to the light, incidentally, after the arrest of a registration official P Sivapriya attached to South Chennai District Registrar who has been accused of aiding illegal property registrations in and around the Pallikaranaimarsh land.

Registration department sources told TOI that illegal registrations came to light during a verification of a property transaction. According to official sources, every stamp paper has a different identity serial number. “But in one of the sale deed, whose registration was traced to November 1975, the same serial number was present in all the stamp papers. This raised our suspicion,” an official said adding that further inspection of the sale deed revealed that the entire document was forged.

This apart, complaints from the original owners also brought the murky activity to light. Sources said about 40% visitors to the South Chennai District Registrar’s office were victims of forgery and had come to file complaints.

Officials said there was a pattern to the fudging of documents. “The registrations with fake documents pertain to unclaimed and open land, and poramboke land of the government. It needs strenuous efforts to differentiate between a forged sale deed and original document because the fraudsters have recreated rubber stamps matching the old style,” a registration department official, privy to developments, said.

While 17 such illegal documentations have been unearthed, steps are being taken to file FIRs, sources added. “The total transactions would be worth of Rs 200 crores,” an official said.

When contacted, a senior official with the office of inspector general of registration said they have received complaints in this regard. “Fraudulent property registrations are generally rampant in South Chennai,” the official said.

Source: Yogesh Kabirdoss, Economic Times, Chennai