Family squabble over sale of prime property reveals massive loss in stamp duty

Fort Magistrate Thilina Gamage ordered the CID to investigate and immediately report to the Court whether the property worth more than Rs. 2.5 billion in Kollupitiya, Colombo, was sold illegally without paying the right price and paying the stamp duty of nearly Rs. 1,000 million due to the Government.

The Magistrate made this order when a case was called in the open Court regarding an investigation into the illegal sale of a land on which a 64-storey building named address 606 in Kollupitiya has been built and a sum of more than Rs. 1 billion, above and beyond the estimated value, was defrauded. When the case was called, the counsel for the plaintiff Mohammad Rumi Rushad Uwais and senior counsel Ajith Pathirana and the other lawyers told the Court that the suspect party illegally acquired the land without paying the stamp duty due to the Government and registered the land at the Colombo Land Office without registering the land at the Delkanda Land Registrar’s office.

The plaintiff has further stated in the complaint that he also has the same rights as his brothers Mohammad Aiman and Mohammad Fairuz, Fathima Rizna. According to a complaint made to the CID, this valuable land belonging to Lewana Marikkar Mohammad Uwais, the grandfather of businessman Mohammad Rumi Rushad Uwais, was fraudulently sold by Mohammad Uwais Mohammad Rushdi, his mother, two brothers and a sister and cheating him without paying his due share. Investigations have been initiated based on this complaint.

The complaint stated that he and another brother had been cheated by his father into setting up the Uwais Trust and that they had filed a case in the Colombo District Court in connection with this, and then he had been swindled of Rs. 100 million rupees and deceived regarding the rest of the money as he had been ill. The complaint has been filed against a group of persons including his father and brothers.