Mumbai: Hemant Jain, who had purchased a Dawood Ibrahim property in an auction conducted by the Income Tax department in 2001, has managed to register the property after a long struggle of 23 years. Now, he has another task to get the possession of the property, which has already been encroached upon.
Mr. Jain, now a resident of Delhi, along with his elder brother Piyush had courageously purchased a 144 square-foot property belonging to underworld don Dawood Ibrahim for Rs two lakh way back on September 20, 2001.
“I had decided to purchase the property because I had read in the newspapers that nobody was willing to buy Dawood properties being auctioned by the IT department out of fear. But after purchasing the property, I had to run from pillar to post to get it transferred in my name,” Mr Jain said.
The properties belonging to Dawood, who is designated as a “Global Terrorist” by the United Nations under United Nations Security Resolution 1267, were seized by authorities under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators (Forfeiture of Property) Act (SAFEMA). However, the IT department’s attempts to auction the properties did not yield any results initially. The Jain brothers were the first ones to buy a Dawood Ibrahim property. After them, the department has auctioned many properties belonging to Dawood over the years.
According to Mr. Jain, after he purchased the property in the auction, he was told by officials in the registrar office that there was a ban on transferring any property owned by the central government. “After I was told that the property cannot be transferred, I went to New Delhi to make further inquiries. There I found out that there was no such ban and I was misguided,” he said.
Subsequently, Mr. Jain was told to pay a stamp duty as per the market value of the property, registration fee and a penalty for the delay in the transfer process. “I was not responsible for the delay. Also, since the property was bought in the auction, the stamp duty should not have been calculated as per the market value. I was doing a follow up with the registrar office for several years, but I did not get any response from them. In 2017, they lost my entire file. Thereafter, I even approached a court. But I did not get any result from the court for five years. After that, I decided to pay all the money and get the property transferred in our name,” Mr. Jain.
The registration papers show that the property was transferred in Mr. Jain’s name on December 19 this year after he paid total charges of more than Rs 1.54 lakh on the property purchased for Rs 2 lakh. However, he has another legal battle to fight for the possession of the property.
Showing copies of letters, Mr, Jain said he has written more than 100 letters to various government departments and even to different Prime Ministers so that he could get possession of the property. He had written letters to the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr Manmohan Singh and also to Narendra Modi. Expressing confidence that he will get the possession, Mr. Jain said, “I will not leave this fight halfway. Now that the property has been transferred in our name, we will also get the possession,” he said.