In Chunchupalli village, Bhadradri-Kothagudem, around 130 people bought plots on land that never legally belonged to the man selling it. His claim to it rested on a sale deed dated 1973. In April 2026 the Telangana High Court held that deed a forgery on a detail its holder could not explain away: it bore the “Satyameva Jayate” slogan, which was only printed on stamp papers from 25 February 1977 — so a deed genuinely executed in 1973 could not carry it. His own senior counsel, on instructions, went so far as to concede that his client had “committed mischief so far as creation of documents is concerned” (Karri Koteswara Rao v. Govt. of A.P., W.P. No. 5716 of 2013, decided 22.04.2026). A title built on a fabricated deed conveys nothing — and everything bought under it falls with it.
Here is the part that should worry every buyer. The real owner had already put out public notices warning that the land was under litigation. People bought anyway. So when the case was decided, the Court refused to treat those 130 buyers as bona fide (good-faith) purchasers — precisely because they had ignored the warnings and paid without checking approvals. They weren’t compensated. They were left to chase the seller separately, and buyers in that position rarely recover their money.
None of them thought they were taking a risk. They had a sale deed and a seller who showed up, signed, and took payment. What they didn’t have was anyone who traced the claim one layer back — far enough to notice the deed it rested on was fake. The Court echoed a principle Indian courts have repeated for decades: fraud and justice can never coexist, and what is built on fraud is a nullity in law — a line it drew from A.V. Papayya Sastry v. Government of A.P., (2007) 4 SCC 221, S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu v. Jagannath, (1994) 1 SCC 1, and Ram Chandra Singh v. Savitri Devi, (2003) 8 SCC 319. And a forged instrument passes nothing on: in a land dispute from this region, the Supreme Court held that a transaction built on fraudulent documents is void ab initio (Meghmala v. G. Narasimha Reddy, (2010) 8 SCC 383).
That is the pattern behind almost every Telangana title dispute: not reckless buyers, but careful-seeming buyers who checked the one document in front of them and treated it as proof — when the real legal standard requires checking something one layer further back. Below are the seven mistakes that show up most often, what they cost, and the exact check that catches each one.
1. Treating a clean Bhu Bharati record as proof of clean title
Telangana’s land records portal, Dharani, was replaced by Bhu Bharati on 14 April 2025 under the Telangana Bhu Bharathi (Record of Rights in Land) Act, 2025. Pull up a parcel, see no red flags, and it is tempting to stop there. But the portal is a known source of errors, not just a record of them.
The 2020 Dharani migration introduced wrong survey numbers, missing sub-survey splits (the sub-divisions of a survey number when land is partitioned), and joint-family land recorded under a single heir instead of all co-owners. Worse, parcels held under valid Pattadar Passbooks — the government-issued land-title passbook — were wrongly swept into the Section 22A prohibited-property list. That list, under Section 22A of the Registration Act, 1908, is what the Sub-Registrar uses to refuse registration of notified government, endowment, assigned and other barred land. If your parcel sits on it — rightly, or by data error — your sale won’t register and most lenders won’t touch it. (The primary one-year window to correct wrong entries under the new Act ran to April 2026; a correction now goes through the Collector.)
The check: Don’t stop at “the portal shows the seller’s name.” Check the parcel’s Section 22A status specifically on the Registration & Stamps portal (registration.telangana.gov.in) and Bhu Bharati, and if a survey number, co-owner or name is wrong, get it fixed at the Tahsildar’s office before you pay — not after.
2. Verifying only the current sale deed, not the chain behind it
The seller hands you a registered sale deed in their name. It looks complete. That is the starting point, not the finish line.
A clean title means an unbroken chain of ownership documents — the “link documents” behind the current deed. The prudent standard is a 30-year search, which is what most banks insist on before lending. A shorter search is exactly how an old forgery slips through: Chunchupalli turned on a deed dated 1973, roughly fifty years back, invisible to anyone who only looked at recent transfers. Courts have voided claims for this precise defect — a seller in the chain who simply could not show how they acquired the property.
The check: Don’t rely on the seller’s own file — in the Chunchupalli story, the seller was the forger. Get certified copies of the chain and the Encumbrance Certificate yourself from the Sub-Registrar’s office, and trace ownership back a full 30 years without gaps. A missing link isn’t a paperwork inconvenience; it’s the exact defect that sinks title claims in court.
3. Buying on a GPA and assuming that’s ownership
A General Power of Attorney feels like ownership when you hold it — you can occupy the property, maybe even sell it on. It is not ownership. The Supreme Court settled this in Suraj Lamp & Industries (P) Ltd. v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656: a “GPA sale” conveys no title, and a sale of immovable property takes effect only through a registered sale deed (read with Section 54 of the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 and Section 17 of the Registration Act, 1908). Title can pass in other ways — inheritance, a court decree, partition, a registered gift — but a purchase from a seller cannot be done on a GPA.
Buy “on GPA” and you get possession. In the records, the property still belongs to whoever gave the GPA — a mismatch that surfaces at the worst moment: when you try to sell, when you try to mortgage for a loan, or when the original owner’s heirs turn up.
The check: A deal structured around a GPA instead of a straightforward registered sale deed is the transaction telling you something. Insist on a registered sale deed in your name. If the seller’s own claim rests on a GPA from someone else, that GPA has to check out as thoroughly as any other link — and even then, it doesn’t replace the sale deed you need.
4. Not checking the layout’s LP number before falling for urgency
Unapproved layouts are sold the same way everywhere: “only three plots left,” a festival discount that expires this weekend, a price that “goes up next week.” The urgency has a job — getting you to pay before you check the one number that would tell you to walk.
Every sanctioned layout carries an LP (Layout Permission) number — from HMDA (the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority) within its area, or DTCP (the Directorate of Town and Country Planning) outside it. Without one, the Sub-Registrar can refuse registration, banks generally won’t lend against the plot, and you can’t get building permission or permanent water and power connections. Your only exit after buying is a government regularisation scheme (the Layout Regularisation Scheme, or LRS) — which may never reopen, and carries penalties when it does.
The check: Get the LP number in writing before you pay, and verify it yourself on the authority’s site — hmda.gov.in for HMDA layouts, the DTCP Telangana portal for the rest. “Approval is in process” is not approval.
5. Skipping the RERA check on an under-construction project
RERA exists to protect buyers on unfinished projects, and TG-RERA (the Telangana Real Estate Regulatory Authority) has acted on it — in 2026 it opened penalty proceedings against a developer, Vajra Prekon Estates, for selling plots in a project it had never registered. Skip this check and you opt out of every protection the law was built to give, usually without realising it.
A registered project must keep 70% of buyer money in a project-specific escrow account, can’t collect more than 10% as advance before a written agreement, and has to disclose carpet area on a standard basis. None of that binds an unregistered project — and marketing one exposes the developer to a penalty of up to 10% of project cost, rising to imprisonment for continued default. (These sit in sections 4, 13 and 59 of the Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016.) If the project stalls, if funds are diverted, if the delivered area doesn’t match the promise, you have no statutory remedy built for exactly that.
The check: Before signing or paying a booking amount, search the project on rera.telangana.gov.in. Confirm the registration number, the promised completion date, and that the developer named on the registration is who you’re actually paying.
6. Assuming agricultural land is ready to build on
Agricultural land in Telangana can’t be used for a house, a shop, or a layout until it is converted through NALA — the Non-Agricultural Land Assessment process under the Telangana Agricultural Land (Conversion for Non-Agricultural Purposes) Act, 2006. HMDA, GHMC (the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation), DTCP and municipal bodies all require the NALA conversion order before they will issue building permission.
Buyers routinely take this as already handled; just as often it hasn’t been, or responsibility for it sits unspoken between buyer and seller. Discover that after you’ve paid, and you own land you cannot build on — land that also carries its own compliance exposure.
The check: Confirm the NALA order exists and covers your specific plot — verify it with the Tahsildar or RDO, not the seller’s word, and don’t accept “the layout is converted” as automatically covering your portion. If it hasn’t been done, fix in the agreement, in writing, exactly who completes and pays for it before the sale closes.
7. Getting a “Nil” Encumbrance Certificate and reading it as good news
An Encumbrance Certificate (EC) is meant to show every mortgage, court attachment, or claim registered against a property. A “Nil” EC — nothing found — sounds like the best possible result. Often it isn’t a result at all. It’s a failed search.
EC searches match against exact plot numbers and address formats as recorded at the Sub-Registrar’s office. Get the plot number slightly wrong, or use an address format that doesn’t match the registered one, and the system returns “Nil” — not because the property is clean, but because it searched the wrong record, or none. Take that at face value and you skip the checks that would have surfaced a real encumbrance.
The check: Pull the EC yourself from the Registration & Stamps portal (registration.telangana.gov.in, the State’s IGRS registration system) using the exact document number and registration year from the sale deed — not an address typed from memory. If the search parameters were at all uncertain, treat a Nil result as inconclusive and confirm at the Sub-Registrar’s office directly.
The pattern behind all seven
It isn’t only Chunchupalli. In Sangareddy, a group forged the District Collector’s signature on a fake No Objection Certificate to sell reclaimed government land. In Hyderabad, a Rachakonda police bust in 2022 exposed a gang that found lookalikes of genuine owners, made fake Aadhaar cards in their names, and registered vacant plots they had no right to sell. In each, the fraud sat one layer beneath what the buyer actually checked — the parent deed behind the sale deed, the approval behind the layout, the registration behind the marketing.
Before you pay any advance on a Telangana property
- Check the Bhu Bharati record and confirm the parcel is not on the Section 22A prohibited list
- Confirm names, survey number and sub-survey details match the sale deed exactly
- Get certified copies of the link documents and trace ownership back 30 years with no gaps
- Confirm the transaction is a registered sale deed, not a GPA standing in for one
- Verify the layout’s LP number directly on the HMDA or DTCP website
- Check the project’s registration on rera.telangana.gov.in (for under-construction buys)
- Confirm the NALA conversion order exists and covers your specific plot (for land once agricultural)
- Pull the EC yourself using the exact document number and registration year — and treat a Nil result as inconclusive if the search was uncertain
None of these checks is expensive or slow. Every one is available online or at a government office, usually within days. The Chunchupalli buyers didn’t lose their money because Telangana’s system lacks the tools to catch fraud. They lost it because the fraud sat one document behind the one they checked — and the warning signs were already there for anyone who looked.
Sources and further reading
- Karri Koteswara Rao v. Govt. of A.P., W.P. No. 5716 of 2013 (Telangana High Court, Nagesh Bheemapaka J., decided 22.04.2026) — the Chunchupalli land-forgery decision: Indian Kanoon; press coverage: The Siasat Daily and Deccan Chronicle
- Suraj Lamp & Industries (P) Ltd. v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656 — Indian Kanoon
- Meghmala v. G. Narasimha Reddy, (2010) 8 SCC 383 — Indian Kanoon
- Ram Chandra Singh v. Savitri Devi, (2003) 8 SCC 319 — Indian Kanoon
- A.V. Papayya Sastry v. Government of A.P., (2007) 4 SCC 221 — Indian Kanoon
- S.P. Chengalvaraya Naidu v. Jagannath, (1994) 1 SCC 1 — Indian Kanoon
- Dharani to Bhu Bharati (Telangana Bhu Bharathi Record of Rights in Land Act, 2025) — The News Minute
- TG-RERA penalty proceedings against Vajra Prekon Estates (unregistered project) — NewsMeter
- Sangareddy forged-NOC land fraud — The Siasat Daily
- Rachakonda Police, fake sale-deed and forged-Aadhaar racket busted (2022) — Press Note (PDF)