On May 25, 2016, three women stood together to sign a legal document in Haryana, releasing their shares in a piece of ancestral land in Gurugram. A photograph was taken that day — Sarupi, Misri, and Gheeso standing side by side, three co-sharers signing away their shares.
Except Gheeso had allegedly been dead since 1993.
The contradiction sat undetected for a decade, until it surfaced on September 15 inside a courtroom in Gurugram — during a legal fight over more than 50 kanals of land in Mohammadpur Jharsa. A local court has now ordered police to investigate both sides of the dispute, after finding that neither side’s story added up.
Competing claims
The case relates to father-son duo, Attar Singh and Shyam Sunder, defending their claim to the land. According to them, a corporate developer, Nemita Commercial Pvt Ltd, had allegedly orchestrated a “fraudulent” ex-parte partition of the land in 2012, without serving them notice. They claim that their possession remained undisturbed until local police threatened them with eviction a decade later, prompted by a complaint from another corporate developer PG Propmart Pvt Ltd, which bought the land from Nemita.
A piece of documentary evidence key to their claim was a registered release deed from May 25, 2016, claiming three elderly women co-sharers, Sarupi, Misri, and Gheeso, had willingly transferred their shares to the family.
PG Propmart, on their part, argued that Nemita Commercial had purchased the land through valid consideration, legitimately secured partition and possession in 2012, and obtained official town planning licenses to develop a plotted residential colony. The builders maintained the villagers were aware of the division for years, had collected government compensation for an acquired portion, and were now attempting to stall development through a time-barred lawsuit.
A death that didn’t add up
The villagers initially challenged the developer’s 2012 partition decree by claiming Gheeso was already dead at the time and her legal heirs were never impleaded. But when the matter reached the court of Dr. Gagan Geet Kaur, Additional District Judge, she began picking apart the conflicting claims, all of which unravelled upon a closer look at Gheeso’s death.
The family claimed that she was dead during the 2012 land takeover, but their own prized document—the 2016 registered release deed—listed her as an active grantor. Not only that, she was also physically photographed standing alongside Misri and Sarupi to execute the deed.
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“Here, question arises if she had already died during partition proceedings in year 2012, then how this release deed can be executed by her in year 2016,” Judge Kaur observed in her order.
“From record, she is also shown present in photograph on release deed dated 25.05.2016 alongwith Misri and Sarupi,” states the order.
When the bench pressed this question, Shyam Sunder crumbled and made a revelation that demolished his own family’s case: his grandmother Gheeso had actually passed away in 1993.
He admitted in court that the deed and accompanying photograph were carried out through acts of impersonation, and that he himself had signed the 2016 deed as an attesting witness to a transaction purportedly executed in person by a woman dead for twenty-three years.
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Both sides under suspicion
This admission, stated the court, also put the developers’ claims under a cloud of suspicion.
“The appellants-plaintiffs (Shyam Sunder and family) have not approached the court with clean hands and hence, are not entitled for any relief… And if, Gheeso was died in 1993 as per appellant no.2/plaintiff No.8 (Shyam Sunder) how partition application can be moved against her in 2012… How revenue authorities registered release deed dated 25.05.2016 without verification,” remarked the court in its order.
The court dismissed the appeal based on the gaps and instead directed the police chief to probe both the 2012 revenue partition and the 2016 registration.
“Mystery over the year of death of Gheeso has made both partition proceedings and release deed no.818 dated 25.05.2016 [allegedly suspect]… Accordingly, this Court is left with no other option except to send the matter to worthy Commissioner of Police, Gurugram with a direction to register an FIR in the matter and to get probed the matter so that truth comes out,” it concluded.
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The dispute had reached Judge Kaur’s court after the district’s Civil Judge (Junior Division) had dismissed the family’s plea for an interim injunction on September 9, 2022, in a civil suit they had filed challenging the partition and seeking to protect their possession. Attar Singh and Shyam Sunder then moved the Additional District Judge in an appeal to overturn that dismissal, even as their parallel challenge against the partition order is pending before revenue authorities.
