Forged sale deeds with Portuguese-era calligraphy, dead men and women shown as sellers, and a village that woke up to discover that half the homes there had changed hands. This is how a land-grabbing racket unfolded in Goa, all under the nose of — and possibly in connivance with — government officials.
These are among the findings of a Commission of Inquiry, which the Goa government formed two years ago to look into dozens of such cases, The Indian Express has learnt.
Significantly, the Commission suggested that such an operation was “not possible without the connivance of the Archives (department) staff”, but observed that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the cases is yet to investigate this aspect.
After a series of complaints came to light, the Goa government formed an SIT on June 15, 2022, to investigate cases of illegal land transfer and land grabbing using forged documents. The SIT probed 44 FIRs involving more than 100 properties — nearly 1.5 lakh sq metre of land — and made 56 arrests, including a record attendant from the Archives Department. Five chargesheets have been filed so far.
The state government appointed a Commission of Inquiry headed by former Bombay High Court judge Justice V K Jadhav (Retd) on September 9, 2022. The commission submitted its report to the government on November 1, 2023, and the Cabinet accepted it in January this year.
The 622-page report has damning observations on how the scam unfolded. Take, for instance:
* One of the deeds, dated December 4, 1951, indicates how the family of one Augustus Monteiro was targeted. The deed shows his wife, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law as joint owners of properties that they sold to one Antonio Francisca Pereira. Except that Monteiro’s mother-in-law, Esperenca Oliveira, was 12 years old in 1951, while the others hadn’t even been born.
* Another property measuring 2942.5 square metres is in Badem. Despite the property being in the family for decades, they discovered one day that it had been “sold” via a sale deed dated June 25, 1996. The deed says that two women in the family tree — Maria Anton D’ Souza and Maria Carvalho — were “married” to each other and sold the property to one Diago Roberto Rodrigues. Except, Maria Joaqueina Carvalho died in 1991.
* In another case, records state that the owners of a property in Badem “executed” a deed of sale in 1951 in favour of the accused’s ancestor. Here, too, one of the sellers was dead, and the other wasn’t an owner at the time.
In fact, Badem in Goa’s Assagao emerged as a village that was repeatedly targeted. Around February 2022, residents began to notice that revenue records of several properties on the Goa government’s website reflected the names of different owners.
The change was due to recent mutation proceedings. On enquiring, villagers found that around 25 properties in the village, which has just 45 houses, reflected the names of a similar set of people on the Directorate of Settlement and Land Records website based on “forged” sale deeds.
It was found that pages had allegedly been inserted into the archives department records, and an attempt had been made to bind them to the original book with a loose string. The authorities were alerted, and a probe began.
The report says that one of the prime accused told the SIT that he and his accomplices prepared fraudulent documents of 93 properties and that 15 had already been sold to different buyers. He disclosed that the mutation of 35 properties has been carried out by the office of Mamlatdar, and the documentation of the rest is underway. The report said, “It appears… most of the properties (47) are from Assagao village… and rest of the properties are from Calangute, Parra, Anjuna and Pilerne village.”
How they did it
According to the Commission’s report, the accused would first identify vacant, unattended, dilapidated ancestral properties or properties occupied by owners with common Goan names such as Fernandes, Rodrigues, and D’Souza.
The accused would obtain ownership and title information of the properties from government offices and other sources.
The accused would then prepare fake and forged sale deeds, written in Portuguese-era style calligraphy, falsely shown to be executed by the owners in favour of blood relatives or ancestors of the accused.
Subsequently, the accused, allegedly in connivance with the staff of the Directorate of Archives and Archaeology, inserted the forged sale deeds into their records, the report noted.
The accused then obtained certified copies of the fake sale deeds from the office of the Directorate of Archives and Archaeology and relied on the same as an authentic document.
The report noted, “It is their strategy in almost all crimes to execute the succession deed. It is shown that upon the demise of the purchaser of the said notarised deed of sale of Portuguese era, on the strength of the said deed of succession, the principal accused become the absolute owners of the property… Thereafter, they get the mutation certified at the earliest and execute the first nominal deed of sale without consideration to legalise the… acquisition of title. It is further their strategy to find out the innocent buyers and sell them the said property for a huge consideration and earn crores illegally out of it.”
The commission called for a scientific investigation “to find out the age of the ink, paper, etc of the said notarised deed of sale, allegedly prepared during the Portuguese era”.
Archives dept under scanner
The report pointed out that government records had been tampered with in a “systematic and organised” manner, indicating a conspiracy.
“So far as the issue of insertion of false and forged deed of sale in the record of Archives department is concerned, the same is not possible without the connivance of the Archives staff. They are yet to be identified and investigation is going on in that regard. Even the Archives department has initiated a departmental inquiry to fix responsibility. Suffice to say that some staff members of the Archives department are part of the conspiracy hatched by the accused persons and helped them in commission of crime,” it noted.
“In most of the crimes, similar modus operandi applied in certain group of FIRs, which is prima-facie indicative of the involvement of the personnel from The Department of Archives and Archaeology, personnel from the office of Mamlatdar, and personnel from the office of Civil Registrar cum Sub registrar and Notary ex-officio. However, the SIT has not yet commenced investigation pertaining to the activities that have arisen from the aforesaid departments in connection with the crimes,” it noted.
While stressing that it is only “a facts-finding body” and has “no adjudicatory functions”, the commission observed that some persons played a key role in the commission of crime but “cleverly remained behind the curtain and used others as their pawn”.
The Department of Archives is the custodian of archival records from 1530. Its record holdings include over 3.2 lakh bound volumes, files and loose manuscripts, containing approximately three crore folios in repositories with historical, administrative and judicial importance. The Directorate of Archives and Archaeology was bifurcated into the Directorate of Archives and the Directorate of Archaeology a few years ago.
Rohit Kadam, Director of the Department of Archives, declined to comment on the commission’s observations.
Rahul Gupta, Superintendent of Police, Crime, said, “We are thoroughly investigating all the cases with financial and documentary linkages. More chargesheets are in the pipeline and will be filed soon.”
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