A 78-year-old woman, who was defrauded of 25 acres of land in 2011, has won back title to the property. Joan Lowhar, a pensioner from West Drive, Champ Fleurs, discovered she had been fleeced of the parcel of land at La Conoa Road, Maracas/St Joseph when she and her children attempted to sell it last year.
The prospective buyer did a search of the property registry and found that Lowhar was no longer the registered owner and that it had been sold to Shamatie Kandaharsingh-De Leon in 2011.
Lowhar sued Kandaharsingh-De Leon as she denied ever entering into a sale with her and alleged that her signature had been forged on the sale documents which were prepared by attorney Wesley Debideen, before he was murdered at Grand Bazaar in August 2013.
While the land had been officially transfered, no one had taken possession of it and Lowhar and her family continued to use it for agricultural purposes, up to the time they decided to sell and discovered the fraud.
High Court Judge James Aboud granted Lowhar a default judgment after a bailiff appointed by the court failed to locate Kandaharsingh-De Leon at the address in D’Abadie which she listed on the forged deed, as it did not exist.
Advertisements were placed in a daily newspapers over a two week period. However, Kandaharsingh-De Leon never came forward.
As part of his decision to allow Lowhar’s lawsuit in Kandaharsingh-De Leon’s absence, Aboud ordered that the deed to be set aside or struck out and that the Registrar General expunge or set aside the said deed from its records.