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Land
mafia plunders Kurunegala The bogus land claimers have gone to the extent of destroying the original deeds and related documents at the Kurunegala Land Registry. During the past six months, there have been more than 210 land frauds including about 75 fraudulent land transfers that allegedly took place in Kurunegala, Inspector R. M. Senadira said. "The Police are helpless regarding these land matters as there are so many people who claim ownership of one land. These people who are linked with each other cause a dispute among themselves and this would eventually isolate the rightful owner of the land so the matter would drag on for years in courts. Thus the police are kept out of the situation since a case is on," said Inspector Senadhira who is in charge of special crimes investigations. "Many lawyers are allegedly involved in the racket. Others have links to underworld gangs which are in turn linked to the illegal drug trade and shady vehicle business," he said. Investigations by The Sunday Times reveal that not only private land but also state land on the Colombo-Kurunegala road has been grabbed. One alleged racketeer is reported to have grabbed as much as 100 acres in the Kurunegala district. "He is so powerful that he is blocking the Police or any government official from investigating the racket," a victim in the Mawathagama area said, unwilling to reveal his name because of obvious consequences. The alleged master racketeer is reported to be blocking out land, preparing forged deeds and selling or mortgaging them to finance companies in Colombo and Kandy. He is allegedly assisted by a Provincial Councillor in the Kegalle district. The alleged racketeer is reported to have already cut down valuable timber on these lands and sold it to merchants or mills. "The land grabbers first destroy the deeds in the Land Registry and make a bogus deed in their name. Then the bogus deed of declaration is written and transferred to members of the gang. After that a false title is created to this property," the victim said. Some of the complaints made regarding this have been investigated by the CID and the Attorney General's Department. It is alleged that the gang has destroyed more than 2,000 deeds over the years. A Kurunegala landowner who now resides in Colombo said the deed of his Kurunegala property was forged after the death of his tenant by the wife of an Ayurvedic doctor who was treating him. "She was working in the Kurunegala Land Registry so she had access to all those documents. She had destroyed the original deed and had made a bogus deed and sold it to five people. When it came to settling the matter in courts there were ten respondents in the case with most of them being bogus owners and members of one gang," he charged. "While the case was going on some of the respondents filed cases among themselves just to confuse the already complex legal process. Many lawyers in the area are also involved in this racket. If I want to sell my property, the people involved in the racket try to condemn it and they sometimes threaten the potential buyer by saying they will have to pay extortion," he said. A Kurunegala Land Registry official said that under the law, they were not responsible for the lands they registered. "When a letter is given to us to register a land we don't check who the owner is. We register it and give it to them and if the deeds have got destroyed the owner should know to reregister it," he said. |
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