Maha: 12 villagers booked for forging land records

A former Sarpanch of a village was among 12 persons booked by the police for allegedly forging documents to grab land registered in the name of a dead person in Murbad taluka in Thane district of Maharashtra, police said on Monday.

The accused, including five women, tampered with the land title documents in the year 2013 to remove the name of the original owner Govrubai Kembari, a resident of Nadai, and instead showed another woman as the owner, a police official said.

The role of the then Sarpanch was to certify the forged documents, he said.

Subsequently, Konkan divisional commissioner disqualified the village head.

A case has been registered against various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), but no arrest is made so far, the official said.