Racket of preparing bogus deeds and then selling them ... nabbed!

Racket of preparing bogus deeds and then selling them ... nabbed!

On the event of an operation being carried out under supervision of Superintendent of Police Mr. Rohan Premaratna of Colombo Fraud Bureau it was possible to uncover all activities from beginning to end of a massive racket relating to a fraudulent network that had been in operation and 8 suspects have been nabbed in this connection.

It was possible to detect the racket when the suspects were in the process of putting a sale through of

a particular piece of land valuing over Rs. 8 crores in Daisy Villa area and subsequently it is presumed that the suspects have already sold over 50 lands the deeds of which and equipment used in preparing them were found as a result.

For the above-mentioned land alone 3 bogus deeds have been prepared, it is revealed. The main culprit in this racket is an Army Captain residing in Kandy Katugastota while he had got together with the other suspects and had sold over 50 lands in various areas and a large number of deeds were found inside a motor vehicle of an accomplice of his. The police were able to recover some bundles of a special type of paper used in preparing deeds, computers used in the preparation of those deeds, stamps utilised for registration and a number of information connected to the fraud.

It has further been revealed that all related activities of this land racket of this main suspect such as locating lands, securing deeds relevant to those lands, finding buyers to sell those lands, accepting the payments, attending to all related matters pertaining to registration by visiting the Registrar's Office were the tasks allotted to other suspects linked to this shady land racket.

A fake deed for the land at Colombo Daisy Villa had been prepared and an equally fake deed has been prepared to the effect that the rightful owner of the said land had sold it for a price of something like Rs. one and half crores. When in the process of forwarding it to the Registrar of the Land Registry the Registrar had been somewhat suspicious how such a land valuing so much could be sold for a comparatively cheap price and had under these circumstances withheld registering it. On inquiring further it was exposed that the land concerned had been sold twice earlier and records to that effect were noticed in the folios relating to that transaction. Subsequently the owner of that house and property had taken steps to notify the Colombo Fraud Bureau. From that point onwards the Fraud Bureau were able to find out everything relating to this land racket on investigations launched and all connected information about the said massive scale fraud.

The rest of the suspects of this racket are residents of Vavuniya, Jaffna, Colombo and Wattala. It is also understood that the wife of the main suspect is in service at Kandy Kachcheri. It is said that there are a number of cases filed against the suspect for having prepared bogus deeds for other lands before this.

Sub Inspectors Kasthurisingha, Saman Nishanth and Dinesh Chandrasiri; Police Costables 88680 Sisira, 79162 Ruwan and 38631 Priyadarshana participated in this raid under supervision of Superintendent of Police Mr. Rohan Premaratna under instructions of Deputy Inspector General of Police Mr. Lalith Pathinayaka.

- Vijayani Edirisingha -