Delhi HC directs police to probe into missing land records case under ACP's supervision
Feb 08, 2023
New Delhi [India], February 8 : The Delhi High Court on Wednesday directed an investigation into the missing land records from the revenue department in the national capital's Daryaganj under the supervision of the Assistant commissioner of police (ACP).
The matter pertains to the missing of land records from the revenue department at Daryaganj. In this case, a Non-Cognizable Report (NCR) was lodged in 2019 no investment took place and the record was lost way back.
Justice Prathiba M Singh directed the Darya Ganj police station to investigate the matter under the supervision of ACP and file a report.
"The Police station Darya Ganj shall investigate the matter and file a report," Justice Singh directed adding to convert the NCR to First Information Report (FIR).
"It is valuable land records. Filing of an NCR is ill-advised," the bench observed while hearing the petition moved by a firm Monk Estate Private Ltd.
The court has also directed the officer (then Sub-Registrar) who filed the NCR, to appear in person on the next date of the hearing.
The court has also sought a status report from the Revenue Secretary in the matter. The officer was presented in the hearing through video conferencing.
He submitted that most of the records had been digitised and it is available on the cloud. Almost more than a crore of documents are digitised.
A status report was filed with an affidavit of the revenue department.
The bench also said the Sub Registrar (SR-3) should look into the possibility of reconstruction of documents. The SR has been directed to verify all the documents.
Meanwhile, the court has asked the petitioner to appear before the SR-3 on February 14 and directed the latter to file a status report within four weeks. It further listed the matter for the next hearing on March 27.
The petitioner company has alleged that it has lost all its land records and has thus applied for obtaining the certified land record.
It was revealed through the Right To Information (RTI) that the voluminous land record has been missing from the office and hence the then Sub Registrar filed the Non Cognizable report.
