SC upholds acquittal of accused in land case

A 20-year-old case of forgery involving the property of a hapless woman in Valliyoor village in Tamil Nadu has fizzled out in the Supreme Court refusing to rule against the accused. It pulled up the State for “poor prosecution and shabby investigation.”

The property once belonged to Doris Victor. The police version is that the accused, R. Jawaharaj, with the help of an imposter who pretended to be Ms. Victor, created a power of attorney and used it to transfer her property by executing a mortgage deed.

Ms. Victor filed a complaint in 1998. She died shortly afterwards, but her daughter Sheila Sebastian took up her mother’s fight. Both the Judicial Magistrate and the Sessions Judge found the accused guilty. The accused appealed to the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, which found no conclusive evidence tying him to the actual act of forgery. The Supreme Court Bench led by Justice N.V. Ramana upheld the High Court decision.

The court said Ms. Sebastian was not utterly remediless. “She has a common law remedy of instituting a suit challenging the validity and binding nature of the mortgage deed and it is brought to our notice that the competent civil court has cancelled the mortgage deed and the appellant has got back the property,” Justice Ramana observed. The court said this was a “classic example” of shabby police work resulting in the acquittal of the accused.