By Tushar Nath Bhattacharjee
On May 6, 2013 the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM) Ms B Giri gave a judgment in the Appeal suit in Shillong in favour of me and my two elder sisters who are now aged between 75 to 82 years. We have been pursuing a long drawn law suit for nine years in Shillong courts against the Additional Advocate General of Meghalaya Mr S P Mahanta and his wife Vennetta Kharsynthiew for illegally encroaching on our parental property of 14,285 sq feet in Lachaumiere, Shillong since July 1993. S P Mahanta is the brother of the son-in-law of Sujata Bezbaruah, who is my eldest sister. Taking advantage of this relationship and my long absence from India due to my work commitments in the Public Works Department in Australia, S P Mahanta pretended to be a well wisher of our family, and appointed himself as the advocate of the family by producing a Vakalatnama for himself. This gave Mahanta the opportunity to get access to the details of the property and to hatch his plans to suit his greedy interests.
After my retirement I filed a suit against S P Mahanta and his wife, in pursuit of justice. But in that pursuit I faced hurdles after hurdles and adjournments after adjournments, to the advantage of the opposite party, creating a strong perception that influential and powerful people were manipulating the legal system. However at long last, after nine years of struggle, we received a just and favourable judgment on May 6, last in the Appelate Court of the CJM, Ms Giri who has graciously given a just judgment, obviously in cognisance of convincing documentary evidence submitted in the court by me, and the dubious documentary evidence submitted by S P Mahanta. Ms Giri has held that the ‘Agreement to Sell’ is not in consonance with law. This just judgment is of great relief to us. Being of very advanced ages, we were starting to fear that we will be a classic case of “Justice delayed is Justice denied”, particularly after an earlier erroneous judgment in the court of the Munsif in February 2012 in Shillong.
As stated in my previous press conferences, S P Mahanta and his wife do not have any Sale Deed for the suit property. They only produced to the court a fraudulent ‘Agreement to Sell’ which bore my forged signatures as an owner, which was witnessed on March 4, 1992 by S P Mahanta himself as the advocate. But my passport record confirms unequivocally that on that date I was not in India but in Sydney, Australia. During his cross examination, S P Mahanta was compelled to admit that although he himself, as the advocate, witnessed my signature on the Agreement to Sell, he actually did not see me putting my signature on the document. Thus it was proven beyond any doubt that the Agreement to Sell, which was submitted to the court as documentary evidence by Mahanta, has no legal standing and is fraudulent.
In fact during their cross examinations, it was not only S P Mahanta who was compelled to admit that he illegally witnessed my signature as the advocate, on the Agreement to Sell, but even his witness Uniki Kharkongor was also compelled to admit that she also did not see me putting my signatures on the document, although she also witnessed my forged signatures on it. This shows that in spite of being a senior advocate and the Additional Advocate General of Meghalaya, S P Mahanta not only did not hesitate to illegally witness my forged signature but also made Ms Uniki Kharkongor to be an illegal witness to my forged signature.
S P Mahanta had consistently maintained in the court of law for nine years that the fraudulent Agreement to Sell was genuine and legal. It was only when my passport record proved unequivocally that on March 4, 1992 I was not in India and could not have signed the Agreement to Sell, that S P Mahanta admitted that he did not see me putting my signatures on the document.
Even in February 2012, after getting an unjust and erroneous judgment in the court of the Munsif,
S P Mahanta held a press conference in Shillong and asserted that he was innocent and falsely accused. He even filed a Defamation case against me because in an earlier press conference I stated that the Agreement to Sell which he produced to the court was fraudulent. He was probably also encouraged by the erroneous judgment in his favour in the court of the Munsif, who made no mention in his judgment of the fraudulent Agreement to Sell, nor of the unequivocal documentary evidence in my passport records. Whereas in the appeal court, the judgment of the CJM held that the Agreement to Sell is not in consonance with law.
If a senior advocate who also holds the responsible position of the Additional Advocate General of Meghalaya is capable of knowingly submitting illegal documents to the court of Law as genuine, and consistently maintained this deception for nine years because he was driven by greed, then he would have no scruples in resorting to all sorts of falsehood and deception to achieve other greedy goals. It is up to the public and media of Shillong to decide whether it is acceptable to allow a person of such dubious professional ethics to continue to hold the position of Additional Advocate General of Meghalaya, and whether it is acceptable to allow some one with such dubious standards of professional ethics to continue to act as a senior advocate in Meghalaya, to the detriment of the image of the other conscientious and upright legal professionals in Meghalaya.