PANJIM: A resident of Dona Paula, who fell victim to a land-grabbing scam, has launched an ingenious website to help other Goans safeguard their properties. The site, www.askpedru.com, provides a database of land dealings, mutations and, public notices published in newspapers over the past two years. It allows users to access alerts by village and alphabetical order.
Speaking to O Heraldo, website founder Daryl da Costa explained, “After realising one of my grandfather’s properties was listed under someone else’s name in Form 1 and 14, I filed an RTI application and discovered a fake Power of Attorney (PoA) was used to steal the property.
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”Further investigation revealed that the culprits — a retired PWD engineer and his two brothers — had also grabbed land belonging to other families in Arpora village. I was determined to help those affected families. By filing additional RTI applications, I learned the various methods by which these land scams were executed,” he added.
Da Costa noted that many fraudulent property deals start with public notices in newspapers. However, most people overlook these notices, unaware that keeping track of them could help thwart such schemes. “As most people don’t have time to go through newspapers daily, I decided to create a village-specific alert service to highlight these notices,” he said.
With this goal, Da Costa developed the website to simplify access to real estate notices from 12 daily newspapers in Goa, published in English, Marathi, and Konkani. The service aims to protect property owners by providing timely information.
A chartered accountant by profession, Da Costa returned from England to Goa’s sunny shores to manage his ancestral property, only to uncover a major land-grabbing operation in his mother’s ancestral village. The main perpetrator is currently facing prosecution in trial and civil courts after the High Court of Bombay at Goa dismissed an appeal to quash an FIR against him.
So far, askpedru.com has 267 registered users and nearly 200 alerts have been sent, according to Da Costa.
