A 63-year-old man has been jailed for three years by a Delhi court for trying to cheat Delhi Development Authority (DDA) by using forged documents to get a plot converted from leasehold to freehold.
Metropolitan Magistrate Ashok Kumar refused to take a lenient view towards Trilok Singh Bakshi, a resident of Rajouri Garden here, saying the punishment for forging documents, committed by him, was "beyond the power of court".
"Bakshi has been convicted for offence of use of forged documents and thereby attempted to cheat DDA as well as the person lawfully entitled to plot and by doing such act, if he had been successful, he would be impinged upon the vital rights of citizens relating to the property," the court said.
It also said that "he would have defrauded organisation like DDA which is the owner of the property and law provides a very harsh punishment for such a reprehensible conduct".
The court's decision came in a case lodged by DDA official M C Singhal who had accused Bakshi of having applied for conversion from leasehold to freehold of a plot in Paschim Vihar, which belonged to one Meena Gupta, by forging her signatures and using fake documents in 1994.
The court, while holding Bakshi guilty, also relied on the forensic report which proved that the convict had forged Meena's signatures on the no-objection certificate (NOC) which he had presented before DDA to get the conversion.
It also said that the act of seeking conversion of the plot from leasehold to freehold "is clearly fraudulent act of accused, perpetrated on DDA, and also would have caused wrongful loss to DDA as well as the victim and wrongful gain to the accused...
