Man arrested for selling farmer's land using forged documents

A man has been arrested in Maharashtra's Yavatmal district for allegedly forging the documents of a plot of land belonging to a local farmer and selling it to another person, police said today.

Arif Ali Abid Ali (35) was arrested yesterday after farmer Prashant Mankar Wankhede complained that his plot of land had been sold to another person identified only as Yadav, a senior police official said.

"Wankhede, a resident of Babhulgaon tehsil here, owned a 2,118 square feet plot of land in Narangi Nagar. He wanted to construct a house on the plot and applied to the local municipal council for permission," an official said.

Soon after, the official said, Wankhede received a call from one Yadav who claimed that he had bought the plot from accused Ali and the sale deed had been registered with the Sub-registrar of Registration in August last year.

Wankhede, in his complaint, stated that he did not get satisfactory answers from the office of the Sub-registrar as to how someone could register a land sale which had been conducted using forged documents.

He then filed a police complaint and investigation into it led to the arrest of Ali, the official said.

A senior official said that the modus operandi of the accused was to zero in on plots of land owned by people who are currently living in some other city and then fabricating documents, with new ownership details, of such plots.

The land in question is then sold on the basis of these forged ownership documents to other people or even mortgaged with banks to acquire loans, the official said.

M Rajkumar, Yavatmal Superintendent of Police, said that investigations into how the accused managed to get the sale deed registered as well as into discrepancies, if any, on the part of the Sub-registrar's office were underway.

"We have got oral complaints from people whose lands have been usurped this way. The investigations into the present case has been handed over to the Crime Branch. Every link of this racket will be investigated," the SP said.

City police station inspector Vijay Rathod said that accused Ali, a resident of Indira Nagar here, has been remanded in police custody by a local court.

He said that a hunt was on for others involved in the case.