PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE | Dehradun
Police have arrested Poonam Chaudhary, a woman wanted in a land registry fraud case in Dehradun, from Yamunanagar in Haryana. She had been absconding for months after her name surfaced in a major property fraud involving forged documents and illegal transfer of land ownership. A cash reward of Rs 10,000 had been announced for her arrest by the police. The Dehradun senior superintendent of police Ajai Singh said that a case involves a piece of land located on Kaulagarh Road, Rajendra Nagar, originally owned by a person named Pyarelal Kaul. A complaint was lodged by assistant inspector general of Registration Sandeep Srivastava alleging that forged documents had been prepared to falsely show the ownership of this land in the name of someone else. The fake documents were fraudulently inserted into the official records of the Registrar’s office to legitimise the ownership change.
Singh said that during the investigation, it came to light that two men Swarn Singh and Amit Yadav, in collaboration with others, created counterfeit documents and registered the land in Swarn Singh’s name. He later transferred the property to Yadav through a gift deed, who then executed another gift deed in the name of Chaudhary. On the basis of these fabricated documents, the accused attempted to gain possession of the land by filing a civil case in the Dehradun court through advocate Kamal Virmani. All three accused- Swarn Singh, Amit Yadav and Kamal Virmani were previously arrested and sent to jail, the SSP said. He informed that Chaudhary had been evading arrest since the FIR was filed and despite several police raids, she remained untraceable. The SSP also announced a reward of Rs 10,000 for information about her after her persistent absconding. Acting on specific inputs and surveillance data, the Special Operations Group (SOG) of Dehradun Police tracked her down to a residential area in Yamunanagar. She was arrested and presented in court, from where she was sent to judicial custody on Wednesday. Singh said that the investigation is still ongoing and further arrests or revelations in the case are likely as more details come to light.
