Mumbai: The Bombay high court unearthed a fraud by an individual, Teddy William David, who had filed a testamentary petition claiming rights to the property of a deceased Bandra teacher, Bruno D’Costa. The HC caught his lie when he claimed that he had received a cheque of Rs 1.40 lakh by D’Costa a month before his demise, whereas the chequebook was issued only three months after the teacher’s demise. The court initiated perjury proceedings against the petitioner and also asked him to return the amount to the tune of Rs 6.47 lakh, out of which some was withdrawn through the chequebook. The single bench was headed by Justice G.S. Patel.
During the hearing, the court called for the bank account details of Citizen Credit Cooperative Bank Limited in which D’Costa had an account. The existence of the account came to light after David deposed to the court that D’Costa had given him a cheque of Rs 1.4 lakh for services rendered by him. David told the court that D’Costa had issued him the cheque a month before he expired and the cheque was encashed only in November 2014.
Unsatisfied with David’s answers, the court asked the bank to submit details of D’Costa’s account and all transactions that had occurred in the account before and after his demise. After perusing the account details, the court found that the bank issued a chequebook to one Eunice D’Souza, who worked as a secretary to David, three months after D’Costa’s demise and the cheque through which David withdrew Rs 1.4 lakh was from this chequebook. The bank informed the court that it was unaware of D’Costa’s death and issued the chequebook to D’Souza as the application for the chequebook had D’Costa’s signature. Further perusal of the withdrawals from D’Costa’s account revealed that various withdrawals were made by different organisations by cheque leaves issued from the said chequebook. The court found that all the organisations had David as one common person in them.
After the revelations, David applied for withdrawal of his testamentary petition which the court rejected and directed him to pay back Rs 6.47 till February 28.
