‘Tamil Nadu’ | On the wrong side of history and law: a fraud exposed

A petitioner’s claim to ownership of a plot of land was rejected as a document he produced, an unregistered will, written in 1967, bore the seal of “Tamil Nadu”; however, the State bearing that name only came into existence two years later.

On the face of it, the petitioner’s claim — that a prime plot of land located adjacent to the Madurai airport was his ancestral property, and that some people had taken possession of it by using forged documents — appeared genuine.

But one of the documents which he produced in support of his purported ownership was sufficient to reject his claim. An unregistered will, written in 1967, bore the seal of “Tamil Nadu” in the stamp paper; however, the State bearing that name only came into existence two years later.

It was District Registrar R. Ravindranath, who is the Assistant Inspector-General of Registrations for Madurai-North, who used some school-level history knowledge to catch out the fraud while hearing the case earlier this month.

The petitioner claimed that about 60 cents of land located close to the Madurai airport belonged to his ancestors and should have been in the name of his grandmother. He alleged that some people had taken possession of the property and even changed the ownership to different names using fake documents.

A detailed enquiry was launched into the demand for cancelling registration of the document and restoring the property to the petitioner. He gave some old documents to substantiate his claim that the land was in possession of his forefathers. However, his prayer relied more on an unregistered will.

“While verifying the unregistered will document written in 1967, I found that the seal of ‘Tamil Nadu’ was affixed on the stamp paper. But the name came into existence only after the then Chief Minister C.N. Annadurai formally announced the renaming of Madras State as Tamil Nadu on January 14, 1969. This evidence was sufficient to dismiss the claim,” Mr. Ravindranath said.

He added that the original owner of the property was duly compensated by the Highways authorities when a portion of the land was acquired for Outer Ring Road expansion work a few years ago. “The petitioner did not make any claim then… Now that the land value has increased substantially, he probably tried to stake a claim using fabricated documents,” Mr. Ravindranath said.