Madras HC directs Chennai Collector to retrieve prime land from land grabbers

The submission of the present owners that some others, who got the ryotwari patta along with their vendor, are still dealing with those properties, is equally untenable since there cannot be equality in illegality of facts. The Collector must take immediate steps to take over those lands also, the judge said.

Justice Venkatesh also rejected a plea from the last purchasers of the property (petitioners), who contended that they should not be victimised for the fraud.

They came into the scene only in 1990 and they believed the land register record and the order of the Assistant Settlement Officer to be genuine ones and hence, they should not be victimised for the alleged fraud.

The concept of bona fide purchaser does not have any role to play in the present case since the property that was dealt with belonged to the government and it was attempted to be knocked off by means of fraudulent documents, the judge said.

The judge was allowing a revision petition from the Chennai Collector challenging the orders of a single judge of the High Court pronounced last year.

In the order given in September, 2021, the court barred the Greater Chennai Corporation from getting into the
property for setting up a micro waste yard without following due process of law as such an interference will violate the constitutional right guaranteed under Article 300A of the Constitution.
Article 300A states that no person shall be deprived of his property save by authority of law.

The judge also pulled up the officials concerned who had connived with the first purchaser (vendor) and a city civil court, which had, without ascertaining the genuineness of the documents gone into the question of the Collector’s power to take back the property.

Claiming that the land in dispute was ‘Annadheenam’ land, the Collector demanded the land be returned to the government.

“This Court cannot shut its eyes in a case where the document, on the face of it, is found to be fabricated and fraudulent only on the ground that the Civil Court has not rendered any findings on the genuineness of the document and had relied upon it and decreed the suit in favour of the petitioners,” the judge said.