Property boom triggers land grabs

Sudhir M. Shah was shocked when he returned to his home in India after living abroad for nearly 20 years to find apartment blocks standing on his two plots of land.

In a police report filed in Jamnagar, Gujarat, Sudhir said he had given power of attorney for the upkeep of his two plots to two brothers, Somchand Rayshi Shah and Maganlal Rayshi Shah.

But once he had left, Sudhir alleges that the brothers forged legal documents granting themselves all types of powers over the property, including the right to sell. It wasn’t long before the brothers sold off Sudhir’s plots for a profit of $121,000.

Now, Sudhir finds himself embroiled in a legal mess and tangled in arguments about forgery and proprietorship. Like thousands of other Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), Shah is on a quest to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his. But being thousands of miles away, he has had to restrict his fight within the frustrating realm of impersonal e-mails and snail-paced letters.

Every year, hundreds of land claims are filed by NRIs with police departments throughout India. From 2007 to June 2008, just in Ludhiana district in the state of Punjab, 31 complaints were filed by NRIs, mostly from Canada and the U.S. And, as most cases takes years to be resolved, experts speculate that there are thousands of open files throughout the state, from which the majority of Canada’s Indo-Canadians originate.

In recent years, the price of property in Punjab has soared to dizzying new levels, providing new incentives for NRIs to reclaim their land. In early June, Merrill Lynch predicted a 700 per cent increase in the Indian property market by 2015.

As half of the Indian population is under 25 and the middle class is growing exponentially, the demand for smaller apartments is set to mushroom, according to Royal Indian Raj, an investment company based in Vancouver.

These unique demographics and a thriving economy is fueling investment opportunities ripe for the picking, especially by those who have been earning solid incomes in a developed nation such as Canada.

Indians who moved to other countries long ago are now returning to India in search of their own El Dorado.

Aging NRIs, in particular, are retuning to their birthplace to reclaim their property, which has often quadrupled in worth in the past five to 10 years.

One such NRI in Ludhiana told IANS: "I didn’t come to India for more than 10 years and only recently realized my property is worth 25 crore ($6 million)."

And NRIs are turning out to be easy marks. Punjab’s land wealth has invigorated the "land mafia" — a group of unscrupulous real estate agents who keep a close watch on the lands and properties of NRIs who hardly visit the state.

In a recent judgment where five members of the "land mafia" were sentenced to prison for illegally selling five and half acres of land in Mohali, Justice Surya Kant commented upon the increasing greed of people for property.

"The land is not only useful for agricultural purposes only but has a great potential for urbanization or commercial activities," he said. "Market price of such kind of land has multiplied over the years. The land mafia has obviously developed a keen interest in the land."

But falling victim to the "land mafia" is only part of the problem. Just as common are NRIs who come home to find that their property has been sold or developed by the very person they entrusted their ancestral lands to, as in Sudhir M. Shah’s case.

Often, informal agreements without contracts and with lease payments paid in cash do not leave a paper trail, practically guaranteeing the lessee’s right to do what he or she wants with the land in the absence of the property’s owner.

"If an NRI is not cultivating the land and there is nothing in writing spelling out the terms of the lease, whether to relatives or strangers, the lessee will often have the right to sell the land," said Gurpreet Pabla, who was a property lawyer for Indian banks before he emigrated to Canada last year.

Keeping business within the family can prove just as risky where land ventures continue to prove profitable in a country where everyone is looking to take home a piece of the property pie.

"Most people prefer not to bring legalities into the family . . . and so there are no records to prove ownership," said Pabla. "Most of the time what I’ve seen is that everything is verbal."

Pabla advises all NRIs who lease out their land in Punjab to draft a contract, even if business is done within the family.

But even when all the paper work is filled out, there appears to be no guarantee that an NRI will find buying or selling his or her land to be smooth sailing.

"The system is just very bad," said Ajent Sandhu, an NRI who lives in Richmond and is currently embroiled in his own legal land tangle. "The ideal situation is that land claims be taken care of by the police or else if it goes to court, it just takes too many years to settle."

As more and more NRIs file land claims, politicians and police are wooing the NRI population with promises of better and faster service. In 2006, the Punjab police department created an NRI division — or cell — to handle international disputes over property, theft and marriage. Even the Punjab Chief Minister, Parkash Singh Badal, recently announced that NRI cases will be dealt with on a high-priority basis.

But despite all the talk, Sandhu says it still takes a long time and a lot of effort for NRIs to find justice from so many miles away. And until the Indian legal system is better equipped to unravel centuries worth of familial entanglements, NRIs are forced to cross their fingers, or bite the bullet.