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The Madras High Court has discharged a former district registrar from a corruption case registered against him for having directed a sub-registrar to register a sale deed with respect to an immovable property that had been classified as a ‘waterbody’ in the revenue records.

Justice N. Seshasayee (since retired), in his order, said, the entries found in the revenue records could not be taken as “gospel truth” and that the registrars were expected to make only a reasonable inquiry regarding registrability of a document and not act as a civil court to decide the title.

The observations were made while allowing a criminal revision petition filed by A.P. Raju against the refusal of Kancheepuram Chief Judicial Magistrate to discharge him from the case booked suo motu by the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti Corruption (DVAC) in 2017.

Petitioner’s counsel Naveen Kumar Murthi told the court that a woman, Jayageetha, had acquired the property at Ullagaram in Tambaram taluk by way of a registered will executed by her father I.A. Durai in 1993. The property comprised of the land and a residential building too.

The woman sold the property in 2005 but the Alandur sub-registrar’s office did not register the sale deed for nearly five years after suspecting it to be a government poromboke land. On March 6, 2010, the purchaser lodged a complaint with the then Inspector General of Registration (IGR).

On June 23, 2010, the IGR wrote to the district registrar wanting to know the reason for non registration. The district registrar communicated the reason to the IGR on July 12, 2010. Thereafter, on being convinced that the sale deed could be registered, he instructed the sub-registrar to attend to it.

Seven years thereafter, the DVAC randomly picked up the transaction for scrutiny, smelt something fishy since the land had been classified as poromboke periya eri (big lake) in the revenue records and registered the criminal case against the sub-registrar, district registrar and the purchaser.

The prosecution also found that in the sale deed, presented for registration in 2005, there was a handwritten insertion describing the property as grama natham. Therefore, it came to a conclusion that there was collusion between the accused to usurp a public land, that too a waterbody.

However, Justice Seshasayee wondered how the DVAC could come to such a conclusion when the will proves that it had been a residential property even before 1993. He also highlighted that the sale deed had been executed after a long period of about 12 years after the registration of the will.

The materials on record were hardly enough to constitute an offence under the Prevention of Corruption Act of 1988. Yet, the trial court had refused to discharge the petitioner without discussing how the documents relied upon by the prosecution were sufficient to conduct a full fledged trial, the judge said.

“To insist upon the petitioner to participate in the trial merely because the trial has commenced may violate the human rights of the petitioner. To force a person to face a trial for nothing and to compel him to undergo the agony and anxiety of its process will be a transgression upon his right,” the judge added.