Probing a registry scam in Dehradun, under which several land records are suspected to have been forged and fake registries prepared, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) on Wednesday indicated that names of some property dealers and Uttarakhand government employees are also under the scanner.
Two FIRs were registered in the case last month, and five more FIRs were registered at Dehradun’s Kotwali police station on Tuesday based on a complaint by the registrar’s office after suspected forgeries in five cases of land registration emerged, officials said.
Among nine people arrested by SIT so far is Kamal Virmani, a lawyer who is alleged to be one of the masterminds of the nexus that is suspected to be responsible for forgeries in the registrar office and the revenue record room under the district collectorate. Virmani was arrested on Monday.
The suspected scam came to light last month after Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami made a surprise visit to the registrar office. The Dehradun DM subsequently set up a committee to investigate some cases of registries and the committee found several alleged forgeries in documents — the ink was allegedly found different in some documents, some pages were pasted at the wrong place, and the stamp had discrepancies in some documents.
According to Dehradun SP, Traffic, Sarvesh Panwar, who is heading the SIT, the committee said that prima facie some documents appear to be forged. Based on that, an FIR was registered at Kotwali police station in connection with four “forged registries” on the registrar office’s complaint. The first FIR was registered on July 15 against unidentified people under IPC section 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 120B (criminal conspiracy), 467 (forgery of valuable security, will, etc) and 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating).
The SIT studied more than 50 registries and made inquiries. Dehradun Police stated that the SIT also looked into bank accounts of several suspects and found transactions worth crores.
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“The first arrest was of one Makkhan Singh, who (allegedly) forged documents to show that he purchased a piece of land from Padma Kumari, who came from an erstwhile royal family in Dehradun, in 1972. Later, two residents of Dibrugarh (Assam) were arrested. They had also forged documents to show that Padma Kumari had given Santosh’s mother a gift deed in 1984. After these arrests, we started unwrapping the nexus and made six more arrests. More arrests are expected in the coming days,” said SP (Traffic) Panwar.
On the modus operandi, Panwar said the accused used to identify different lands and study its history of at least the last 50 years. Then they would find puppet owners and offer them money in exchange for getting the land registered in their name, he said.
“Land records are kept at the registrar office and the revenue record room under the collectorate,” Panwar said. “They made forgeries in both offices. Based on the investigation so far, we have arrested two people working as binders at the registrar office. These people were reached by those running the nexus…the binders used to change or forge the documents. In the revenue record room, the files were replaced by forged files.”
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