CHENNAI: Madras High Court has directed the State government to initiate criminal prosecution against persons trying to grab Alavandar Charity’s property worth Rs 1,000 crore. The court ordered to evict the encroachers from the land.
Justice S M Subramaniam observed that the petitioner’s submission of documents, including the death certificate of Alavandar cannot be trusted upon and found to be fraudulent. The petitioner is not entitled to the will of late Alavandar and he cannot alienate the subject property, observed the judge.
The court added that the petitioner illegally used fraudulent documents to grab the property and is liable to criminal prosecution and directed the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments (HR and CE) to execute criminal prosecution against the petitioner and the encroachers, within four weeks. The judge also directed the HR&CE to protect the property owned by Alavandar Charity and evict the encroachers from the charity’s land. Considering the age of the petitioner, the judge dismissed the petition, without any cost.
The petitioner, K Munusamy, moved the High Court claiming to be a relation of the late Alavandar and the legal heir of the Alavandar charity and its immovable property of nearly 1000 acres at ECR road Chengalpattu, worth more than Rs 1,000 crore.
In a will created in 1914, the late Alavandar endowed all of his properties including the disputed land in and around Thiruporur to various temples for charity purposes through his Alavandar charity. He also designated his relation Muthu Krishna Naicker as the manager of the charity to carry on the work. However, after his demise, his sons claimed the property of the charity as they are the heir of the charity, which was refused by the Chengalpattu sub-court.
Claiming to be the heir of Naicker, petitioner Munusamy contended that in 1997 Naicker had executed a will in favour of him. To support his contention, he submitted a death certificate of Naicker, which the Special Government Pleader (SGP) N R R Arun Natarajan objected to as a fraudulent document. The SGP contended that the petitioner is using illegal documents to grab the property. The original will, executed by the late Alavandar, is endowing the property in favour of temples for charity purposes alone, said the SGP. Further, he submitted the original death certificate of Muthu Krishna Naicker, which established that he died in 1936 and raised the entertainability of the petition.