How to Sell Land or Property In India – Sorry that was how to get robbed!
I’ve been buying and selling property in the UK for now thirty years. Sadly my mother passed away in 2016 – God bless her beautiful soul – and I was left with sorting out the inherited land in India.
This is where the nightmare begins!
My mother had ensured that the land was transferred to myself and two other siblings. A will was written stating that the land would go to the sons and not the daughters. Well that in itself is proving problematic.
I as a PIO – Person of Indian Origin was expecting a simple and peaceful inheritance with family legacy to be kept intact and set to be passed down from generation to generation. It had never been our intention to keep the land – as we had no intention of going back to the village.
The memories of my grandfather, great grandfather and fore-fathers that my mum wanted to be cherished lost to generations to come – Afterall what were we going to do with it.
My mother passed in April 2016 and by August 2016 we started to unravel the lands and properties owned by the family.
My uncles – my mother’s brother and cousin – told us what was ours and what was theirs – who owned what where. I believed every word said, every land number written, every map drawn. However our land titles in Jalandar, Punjab didn’t tally up with what we were being told.
When we arrived in India and looked at what we owned physically, the conversations with my mother, what my father used to tell us and uncles discussed – it dawned on me the value of what we had.
In the film ‘UP’ a house sits on building site with huge buildings towering it. Our lands had a Mercedes dealership on the right and a McDonalds on the left, with land merging with one of the major roads of the Punjab – the GT Road!
Wow! The values of the lands were in the millions – and didn’t everyone else know but this PIO!
As I looked out onto the lands from our property, a brick wall ran through it and part of it was being built on. My brother had sold land without informing anyone.
I was shocked – My own brother! My Land! How can he do this? What rights does he have to do that!?! WTF!!
He had a third share of the land and sold it by proxy – giving power of attorney to a third party.
We had all agreed that we would do this as three brothers, land sold as a whole would be worth considerably more as whole. The third party, a cousin, sold the land to other parties but had split up lands. In the process lands that belonged to us, or a greater share was sold belonging to myself and my brother.
Within weeks, the ‘new owners’ were building shops on the land they had bought. It was a mess and a legal quagmire.
After giving up the rights of the lands and property, one of my sisters decided to challenge the will. Well I suppose that’s within her rights, after all my daughters will inherit equally with my son!?! Then another member of the family and an uncle also made claim to the land.
Writs were flying around in the Indian courts like confetti.
My experience has been costly and painful but eventually everything was resolved through the courts.
