KOLKATA: Check the land deed twice before you buy a plot from a broker. Chances are that the deed is fake, a clone of the original, like counterfeit notes. Land deed cloning is the Ponzi firm’s latest gift to fraudulent trade in the state.

TOI has learnt that Ponzi firm owners had started the fraud with a section of Bank and land registration officials. They fake signatures and seal of the land registration authorities, thus selling the same plot to many buyers. Hundreds of complaints have poured into the Shyamal Sen commission’s office set up to probe the Saradha muddle, where many have lodged co plaints against fake land deeds, apart from asking for a refund of money. Such fake dealings in the way of multiple mortgages have also added to the bad assets of banks.

“Most of the cases involving fake or cloned documents in land deals have been reported from districts like South and North 24-Parganas and Nadia,” said Dipankar Mukherjee, secretary of the All India Bank officers’ Confederation (West Bengal state unit).

Alarmed with the situation, the state government had started to confiscate land lying with the suspicious companies. The government has started to seize land of companies that have more than 24 acre in possession.

“The trend of duping banks by forging land deeds was high in the middle of the past decade. City police have busted several rackets where fraudsters had managed to get bank loans with forged documents, and in some cases loans were obtained from different banks showing the same land or property. In several cases, probe unearthed a nexus between the fraudsters and a section of bank employees. But now, after busting several rackets, we have managed to buck the trend,” said Pallav Kanti Ghosh, joint CP (Crime), Kolkata Police.

According to bank sources, the fraudsters close land documents and sell the same piece of land to several people. “It is difficult to make out the fake from the original as those are done very meticulously. They even copy stamp of the registering authorities and signature on the original,” said a bank official.

T R Chawla, executive director of Allahabad Bank, said most of the frauds that are reported are done by individuals. “We have seen cases where documents were faked but mostly these are done by individuals, rather than any corporate entity,” he said.

Although the number of land frauds has come down after the banks in the state have started using Central Registry of Securitisation Asset Reconstruction and Security Interest (CERSAI), the fraudsters have taken innovative routes to dupe people. “There is a mechanism that allows us to search if that land had already been mortgaged with any bank. But if that land is already sold to an individual and has no mortgage records, it is difficult to track it down,” Mukherjee said.

According to Deepak Narang, executive director of United Bank of India, “We have been able to contain such frauds after the banks have started using certified copies of land deeds and using CERSAI extensively.

Source: The Times of India