WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2024
ASMITA POLJI
ANJUNA: This is straight out of Ripley’s “Believe it or not”. A husband bought a property in 1934 and his wife bought the same property in 1951. Strange but this has happened in Badem-Assagao.
One of the biggest land grabbing in Assagao has been reported wherein land admeasuring 18,500 sq mts having Survey No 78/2 is found to have sold out twice by the landowner to a husband in 1934 and later to wife in 1951, as the land was later encroached.
This is one of the first cases, which led to the awakening of the residents of Badem and compelled them to check whether they still owned their properties or not. But sadly, the investigations into this by the Special Investigation Team have not even led to the filing of a chargesheet against the accused.
This 18,500 sq mts land situated at Badem was purchased by Domingos De Sousa, grandfather of Vincent De Sousa (a businessman settled in Delhi), who is the victim and co-owner of the property. He has been making all-out attempts to get back the property by filing a complaint with the police.
According to the complainant, the land in question was bought by his grandfather Domingos De Sousa prior to 1910 from the aframento but shockingly, the culprits managed to change the title even when the property issue was sub judice within the family.
It is revealed that in 1934, a fake deed was inserted in archives where the father of Branca Cassiana Diniz alias Branca Rodrigues had bought the property from the complainant’s grandfather and later again in deed 1951, it has been revealed that the same property was once again purchased by Branca’s mother from the complainant’s grandfather. Later using virtue of succession deed made in Canacona, the property was transferred in the names of Branco Rodrigues, Royson Rodrigues, Mariano Antonio Teles Gonsalves, and Paulina Juliana Diniz with Mutation No 79705 which presently reflects on Form I & XIV.
The vendor is shown as the complainant’s grandfather Domingos De Sousa as a bachelor in 1934 whereas the fact is that he was already married at that time with five children.
This reveals that the culprits created fake deeds of one property and sold it to a family, which had already purchased the property years ago.
Meanwhile, at present the 18,500 sq mts of land has been encroached upon and have two temporary shades with bouncers deployed, while the original owners have been threatened not to even look at the property. The access to the land has been blocked.
In this regard, the owner has filed a complaint at the Anjuna Police Station and to the SIT as well but in vain.
ACCUSED TRIED MUTATION OF ANOTHER LAND
Apart from this, the accused persons tried mutation of another land measuring 3,500 sq mts having a house belonging to the owner.
Co-owner Vincent De Sousa said, “I came to know about this in February 2022 when we found that someone has claimed the property’s ownership. I was shocked because for the past several years the matter is in the court for settlement inventory and how can the title of a sub judice property be changed by some other means?”
“It seems that the government machinery is tacitly slowing the process for the common man. Passing the buck between SIT, Mamlatdar, Sub-Registrar, Police, etc is on, so files are not being processed to their logical conclusion. The common man is unnecessarily harassed and time and money are wasted in visiting the courts and land records-related offices,” De Sousa said.
“In June 2022, a complaint was filed, but to date, the police have not been able to evict those miscreants, from one of our properties, Survey No 78/2. Nothing much has changed. A couple of people are in the shed and SIT and police are passing the buck on to each other to evict these crooks and rectify the forged records so that we can transfer the title to the bonafide inheritors as per our inventory settlement”, De Sousa added.
