THE GOAN NETWORK
PANAJI
The Enforcement Directorate (ED) Goa has provisionally attached a 5,000 sq m land parcel in Socorro, valued at Rs 4.20 crore, after its investigation allegedly uncovered a property-grab scheme in which the title to the land was created through a false identity claim before the property was carved into 11 plots and sold to nine purchasers.
As per information shared by the ED, the attached property, bearing Survey No 210/5 at Kumarwaddo, Vaddem Ward, comprises 11 plots measuring 4,086 sq m in all, besides 914 sq m of common area. The attachment has been made under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).
The ED further said its investigation arose from an FIR registered by the Porvorim Police Station on a complaint by a legal heir of the original owner. The FIR alleged cheating, cheating by personation and use of forged documents as genuine under the Indian Penal Code. The case is now being investigated by the Special Investigation Team (SIT-Land Grab) of the Crime Branch.
“The property originally stood in the name of the complainant's late father. The alleged fraud began with an Inventory Proceeding before a civil court, where it was falsely represented that the father of two sisters living in Pune was the same person as the deceased owner of the Socorro property. On the strength of the order obtained in the proceeding, the land was subsequently mutated in the names of the two sisters,” the agency said.
The ED investigation has also uncovered a payment that it said indicated that the sale had been arranged even before the sellers had any apparent title or authority over the property. A resident of Socorro had obtained a Power of Attorney from the two sisters and their husbands in Pune on February 17, 2018. However, Rs 9 lakh had already been remitted through banking channels to one of the sisters on January 22, 2018, by a person who later purchased a plot from the property.
The payment, the ED said, was made nearly a month before the Power of Attorney and more than a year before the Inventory Proceeding that purportedly created the title.
The land was subsequently subdivided into 11 plots without planning permission, according to the agency, and sold between 2018 and 2020 to nine purchasers through a chain of brokers. The sale deeds were executed by John Paul Valles as Power of Attorney holder.
“The five sale deeds executed in 2018 contained a further anomaly. They referred to devolution of the property upon the vendors through an Inventory Proceeding that had not yet taken place,” the complaint alleged.
The deeds declared a combined sale consideration of Rs 63.65 lakh. However, the ED said its investigation found that Rs 1.49 crore approx was actually paid, largely in cash and through cheques handed over with the payee's name left blank. The fair market value of the plots sold was assessed at Rs 3.43 crore, it said. The ED had earlier conducted searches on July 4, 2025, at eight premises in Goa and Pune, during which digital devices and documents were seized.
