Leader of gang involved in Bengaluru property eviction racket booked under stringent Karnataka Organized Crime Control Act

The gang created fictitious rental disputes between a “fake owner” and a “fake tenant” and filed fake suits in courts to obtain fake decrees for land ownership without the original owners being parties to the fake suits or even being aware of the cases.

“The CID has invoked the Karnataka Control of Organized Crime Act, 2000 (KCOCA) against the notorious John Moses and his accomplices, who have been siphoning off the properties of innocent people in Bangalore city and surrounding areas by creating fake documents and filing cases in courts using fictitious persons,” the CID said in an official note on July 22.

“The case was handed over to the CID for further investigation and during the course of investigation, many similar crimes were unearthed and more than 100 cases were registered. In all these cases, the activities of John Moses and his accomplices have been revealed,” the CID statement said.

Out of the cases investigated by the CID at the behest of the Karnataka High Court, “51 cases have been completed and charge-sheets have been filed in court. The rest of the cases are currently under investigation”, the CID note said.

“The investigation has proved that the crime syndicate not only snatched the land/property/houses of people but also threatened them and cheated them out of crores of rupees,” the CID statement said.

“The head of this gang, John Moses, has been arrested and brought under the custody of the CID police, and the investigating officer has initiated further investigation by invoking the KCOCA Act against him,” the CID said.

How the scam came to light

Several politically connected persons and VIPs are alleged to have used the services of the John Moses gang to grab prime disputed properties in Bengaluru, the CID probe has revealed.

The eviction racket with as many 118 interlinked cases – involving the same set of lawyers and fake litigants — was unearthed in 2020 following the intervention of the Karnataka High Court in a case filed by private firm Shah Harilal Bhikabhai and Company.

The firm approached the High Court after a fake eviction order was obtained against the firm by the “eviction gang” for a north Bengaluru property of the firm after fielding fake tenants and owners in a small-causes court in Bengaluru.

The Karnataka high court ordered an in-depth probe into the fake evictions racket and the Karnataka government handed the investigation to the CID.

Among the cases where fake decrees were obtained by the gang, one case from 2018 involves a former MP associated with both the Congress and the BJP, the CID probe has found. The former MP allegedly hired the services of the “fake suits gang” to seize a prime property in Bengaluru city, sources said.

“The entire record of this case is seized and preserved as per the orders of the Hon’ble High Court of Karnataka,” states an October 7, 2021, order of a small causes court in a “fake decree” case identified by the CID as involving the gang after they were hired by the VIP.

The modus operandi of the gang

The CID investigations have estimated that properties worth several hundreds of crores were grabbed by VIPs and others by using the services of the fake suits gang, which comprised a few local advocates and unemployed people put together by John Moses to play the roles of “fake litigants” in the small causes court when a fake suit was filed.

The modus operandi of the gang involved the creation of a fake rental agreement (for a property targeted for grabbing) between a fake owner and a fake tenant put up by the gang and to file a case in the small causes court for eviction of the “fake tenant”.

The small-causes court would then be informed that the litigants had reached a compromise and that the tenant had agreed to leave the property — in order to obtain a court decree directing the tenant to leave the property as agreed.

Using the decree, the gang would then seek police support and evict whoever is in possession of the property being targeted by the gang.

The gang started in 2013 by targeting disputed properties at the behest of someone who had been cut off from having rights over a property and later moved on to obtaining “fake decrees” for anyone hiring them, sources said.

Properties belonging to the Bengaluru city corporation have also been targeted by the gang and an FIR was filed by an official of the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike on September 4, 2021, in an attempt to grab a property in central Bengaluru through the gang.

Many of the suspects named in the over 100 cases are the same. In fact, Moses himself has been a fake litigant in as many as eight fake decree cases while associates like Sendil Kumar – who claimed to be a general power of attorney (GPA) owner for the property belonging to Shah Harilal Bikabai and Company — is involved in as many 22 fake suits for evictions.

The Shah Harilal Bikabai and Company filed a petition against its eviction from a 100 x 56 square feet property in north Bengaluru in 2018 using a court decree that was issued despite the company being in possession of the land since 1954.

The High Court found that fraudulent means were adopted to evict the company from the land – with a group of persons creating fake documents to claim ownership of the property and filing a case in the small causes court for eviction of a fictitious tenant – put up by the fake owner himself.

In its order in the Shah Harilal Bhikabai case, the High Court asked the registrar of the small causes courts “to institute a police investigation in this serious matter and cause a domestic enquiry against the suspect officials of the court, since fraud, forgery and fabrication ordinarily do not happen without the involvement of insiders”. The registrar of the small causes court filed the first FIR in 2020.