The Madurai bench of the Madras High Court has ordered for an enquiry, by the Principal District Judge (PDJ) here, into the complaint regarding an alleged change of name of the defendants in a suit pertaining to 40 cents of land, apart from fabricating false records, tampering suit register in the sales certificates and Execution Petition proceedings at a sub-court here.
In an interim order, Justice Chitra Venkataraman and Justice M. Duraiswamy said “a cursory glance of the statement made by the PDJ in 2007 as to the entries for the suit register and Execution Petition registry show difference in the names of parties added under the caption of defenders.” A copy of the suit register reads the name of the parties differently, particularly with reference to the defendants’ names. “We feel it is a fit case where enquiry should be conducted by the learned PDJ,” the judges said.
The PDJ is requested to look into the records, conduct an enquiry and file a comprehensive report within four weeks.
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According to the petitioner H. Ramathilagam, she had purchased 40 cents of land in Vilangudi village from P. Mary Jacob, who in turn, had purchased the property from Karuppiah Servai earlier.
Mary had executed a bond to Karuppiah for Rs. 50,000, but no encumbrance was made to the property purchased by her.
Meanwhile, Karuppiah filed a suit for the recovery of money due from Mary. He also got ex parte decree, for the land sold by Mary to the petitioner, as she was in Bangalore by providing a wrong address.
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As Ms. Ramathilagam was also in Chennai, Karuppiah got the land in auction and resold a part of the property— 30.75 cents —to one Meeran. Then for the remaining 10.25 cents, Karuppiah setup his wife Ammapillai and made her file a partition suit.
In the said suit Karuppiah abstained from appearing and got the decree in favour of his minor sons and the property was resold to Meeran’s heirs again.
Though the petitioner had legitimately purchased the property from Mary, he was shocked to know that Meeran was occupying the property.
The petitioner filed a private complaint against Karuppiah and also filed a civil suit to vacate Meeran, who had filed a suit before the district munsif court seeking a prayer that the sale deed executed by Mary to the petitioner was null and void.
In Meeran’s suit, Mary’s address and the petitioner’s addresses had been wrongly stated, leading to ex parte decree again.
When Ms. Ramathilagam asked for the suit papers for the case between Karuppiah Servai and Mary Jacob, he was informed that the papers had been destroyed. Then it was found from the suit register that all aspects relating to the name of the plaintiff, value of money, date of auction and confirmation sale subject had been altered and they differed.