Attorney Larry Lalla is calling on police to establish a task force to target specifically land fraud. He made the call on Wednesday after successfully obtaining a judgment for 71-year-old pensioner Deonarine Sookdeo, whose home in St Augustine was demolished by a man who had fraudulently obtained a deed for the property.
“Members of the public must appreciate the gravity of the situation and exercise extreme caution when purchasing property, especially from strangers. Please insist on more than one form of identification and use commonsense,” Lalla added.
Lalla, who said that Sookdeo’s case was not unique, suggested that a fingerprint system be put in place by the Government to minimise the risk of fraud.
“It appears as though they are producing fraudulent forms of identification so the authorities will have to go one step further and use fingerprints to ensure that persons conducting these transactions are actually the owners of the property,” Lalla said. He also suggested that people make video recordings of transactions which could be used as evidence in the event they eventually turn out to be fraudulent.
According to the evidence in Sookdeo’s case around 8 am on December 6, 2014, a bailiff and a group of police officers came to his home at Deena Trace, St Augustine, and informed him they were there to evict him and his family.
Even as Sookdeo produced his deed for the property which had been in his family since 1921, the group of men, who did not produce any court order proceeded to bulldoze the two-storey house and erected a fence around the one-acre property valued at over $3 million.
When Sookdeo’s attorneys conducted a search in the land registry they found that three false deeds had been affixed to documents relating to the ownership of the property, including one from April 2001, which purported to show that Sookdeo’s brother Ramnarine effected the sale to Moonie Mungal.
“Bear in mind that Ramnarine had died in 1996,” Lalla stated.
In the two other deeds, originating in May and November 2013, the property was transfered from Mungal to William Bovell and then to Christopher Tiwarie, who allegedly commissioned the bailiff to evict Sookdeo.
Lalla said he attempted to serve the legal documents on all three men but was unable to locate them at the addresses listed on the real estate documents and they did not respond to advertisement placed in newspapers.
Delivering a judgment in the Port-of-Spain High Court, Justice Vasheist Kokaram struck out the fraudulent deeds from the land registry. As the men are yet to be located, Sookdeo has filed separate legal proceedings against the State as he claims that the police were negligent in allowing the eviction without a valid court order.
That case is still pending and will come up for hearing in April.
‘Life left in ruins’
In a brief interview at Lalla’s chambers, an emotional Sookdeo said he was happy with the judgment but stated that his life was left in ruins by the entire situation.
“Sometimes I think I would prefer to die than go through this. I would not want this for my worst enemy,” Sookdeo said as he broke down in tears.
“My property has been bought and sold and up to this day I don’t know how it was done because I don’t know any of these people.
“I am approaching 72 and I have to fight to survive,” Sookdeo added. He said that because his home was almost completely destroyed in the bulldozing, he will now have to sell the property to pay the rent for the home he and his family has been living in since.
“I am a law abiding citizen, this is barbaric,” he said.
In January, the Law Association made a similar call to police as Lalla, as it said it was aware multiple incidents of land fraud, some of which were perpetrated by attorneys.
“The association is in the process of collating a database of these suspicious deeds and questionable transactions, as well as meeting with several stakeholders in order to address this problem,” it said. Sookdeo was also represented by Sarfraz Alsaran.