Forged GPA Fraud: How Power of Attorney Scams Destroy Buyer Equity

A 400 sq yd plot in Rangareddy district was bought in 2023 by an NRI from Dallas. What the seller offered was a notarised General Power of Attorney, signed, he said, by an elderly principal who lived abroad. After the plot was registered and mutation applied for, the buyer returned to the US certain that the deal was clean. Eight months later he received a registered notice in Dallas. It said the "principal" had died in 2021, two years before the date on the GPA, and that his legal heirs were claiming the plot. In title terms, the buyer's ₹68 lakh sat on paper that no living person had ever signed.

This is no rare tale. Property fraud in India most often looks just like it, and almost always works through a General Power of Attorney (GPA) that is forged or abused.

The GPA and why so many frauds revolve around it

“Definition: Under the Powers of Attorney Act, 1882, a GPA (General Power of Attorney) is a document by which one person, the "principal", empowers another, the "holder", to handle many of the principal's affairs. Historically this covered selling or developing immovable property. Since the Supreme Court decided Suraj Lamp & Industries v. State of Haryana in 2011, a transfer by GPA conveys no ownership of immovable property in law, and only a registered sale deed does. All the same, a GPA signed alongside a sale, used in place of the seller or used for an absent owner shows up in the chain of almost every Indian property deal.”

If you want the basics of the GPA and its difference from a Special Power of Attorney, our guide to power of attorney for property (GPA vs SPA) covers them.

The GPA appeals to fraudsters for a structural reason. At a sale, the seller must stand before the sub-registrar with photographs, fingerprints, biometrics and witnesses. A GPA lets a third party, the "holder", do all this instead. The principal may be ill, in another country or, at worst, imaginary or dead. Once the GPA bears a notary stamp or registration number, the system tends to trust it, and that is what the fraudster uses.

Four ways forged GPA fraud is committed

In India, GPA frauds usually take one of four forms. Buyers and bank credit risk teams should learn to recognise each one.

1. A wholly forged, unregistered GPA

This is the simplest form. The fraudster types a GPA on stamp paper, signs the name of an absent or imaginary principal and persuades a friendly notary to attest it. The GPA then supports a sale deed. The GPA is never registered, so the registrar's office holds no master copy for comparison. To the buyer it looks like a notarised document and so appears valid. The "principal", if he ever existed, has no idea that his identity is in use. The pattern is dominant in agricultural land sales in the semi-urban belts of AP and TS, where the original landowners moved away decades ago.

2. A GPA that was revoked but is still used

In this form the GPA started out genuine. The principal signed it for some old development project, an earlier sale that collapsed or a family arrangement. Later he cancelled it by a registered Deed of Revocation. The "holder" nevertheless takes the old GPA and uses it for a new sale to a buyer who suspects nothing. Sub-registrars have no real-time check on revocations. Unless the buyer's lawyer searches for a revocation deed specifically, the old GPA looks live. This shape is common in redevelopment cases in Bengaluru and Pune, where old POAs from defunct projects resurface.

3. A GPA from a principal who has died

The law is plain: under the Powers of Attorney Act and the Indian Contract Act, a GPA lapses the moment the principal dies (Sec. 201, Indian Contract Act, 1872). Yet the registry is not told of deaths, and no government mechanism cancels a GPA once a death certificate is issued. Fraudsters take advantage and use an old GPA whose principal has died. The legal heirs may never have heard of it. This is the Dallas case above. On finding out about the unauthorised deal, the heirs sue for partition or for a declaration, and the buyer faces years of litigation.

4. A GPA from someone posing as the owner

This type is the hardest to detect. A fraudster poses as the real owner, using a forged Aadhaar, PAN and address proof, and signs a GPA in favour of a "holder" of the impersonator's choosing. The GPA and the sale deed that follows may both be properly registered, and the documents look flawless. The real owner, perhaps an NRI or a senior citizen in another state, learns of it only when applying for an EC, trying to sell, or visiting the property. This form is seen most often with NRI-owned plots on the outer corridors of Hyderabad, where owners stay away for years.

Registering a GPA helps but does not end the fraud

Suraj Lamp and several state amendments have led most states to expect that a GPA on immovable property is registered under the Registration Act, 1908. Notarisation by itself no longer suffices. AP and TS sharply raised the stamp duty on a GPA for sale in 2014–2015, to discourage GPA-based transfers.

Three useful things follow from registration:

• A master copy is left at the sub-registrar's office for later verification.
• It brings stamp duty close to that of a sale, removing the cost advantage a GPA had over a sale deed.
• It requires the principal to be present, with biometrics or a photograph, which makes plain forgery harder.

What it cannot do:

• It does not test whether the principal is alive when the GPA is used later.
• It does not test whether a revocation was registered somewhere else.
• It does not verify identity beyond the documents shown at registration, so an impersonator with a clean fake Aadhaar gets through.
• It places no duty on sub-registrars elsewhere to share data on revocations.

Even a "registered GPA" is therefore no guarantee. It is a starting point.

Red flags in a GPA: a detection checklist

Before you depend on any GPA in your chain of transactions, go through this checklist, since a competent legal opinion would cover every item. For the complete list of warning signs, see our guide on red flags in property documents every buyer must spot.

• The GPA is unregistered and only notarised. Treat it as high risk for any transaction in immovable property.
• More than 2 years separate the GPA from the sale. The older the GPA, the likelier it is that it was revoked, ended by death or replaced.
• The principal is said to be "abroad" or "out of station" and unreachable. Fraudsters use this pattern more than any other. Demand a live video call with the principal.
• The GPA holder has no relation to the principal. Friends, neighbours and "associates" as holders call for deeper checks. Family GPAs (spouse, child, parent) carry statistically lower risk.
• It grants very broad powers: sale, mortgage, lease, redevelopment and signing cheques. A narrow SPA for the one sale is the safer instrument.
• The principal's signature on the GPA does not agree with the signature on the ID documents.
• The GPA has no photograph of the principal, or uses a poor photocopy.
• No consideration is mentioned. If unrelated parties give a GPA "for natural love and affection" or "for services rendered", be suspicious.
• The sub-registrar's seal or registration number cannot be read, follows the wrong format, or belongs to a different district from the one stated.
• The GPA refers to an underlying agreement (a sale agreement or development agreement) that you have never seen.

How a proper title check tests a GPA

For every GPA in the chain, a competent title check by a lawyer or by an AI-driven platform like LegiScore will:

• Registrar verification. Obtain from the sub-registrar's office of registration a certified copy of the GPA, and set it against the seller's copy.
• Check of the revocation registry. Look for any registered Deed of Revocation, ideally in every sub-registrar office of the district and not only the one that registered the GPA.
• Proof that the principal is alive. Use a live video call, a witnessed signature or, for NRI principals, a consular-attested affidavit that the GPA is current. For high-value deals, do this within 30 days of registration.
• Cross-check for a death certificate. For older GPAs, check state birth-and-death registries to confirm that the principal is alive. For NRIs, ask for a recent photo ID on a video call.
• Consistency along the chain. Line up the principal's signature, photograph and ID numbers in the GPA, the identity proof and any earlier sale or partition deeds. A small mismatch is usually the first sign of impersonation.

The GPA check is one of the 29 sections in a LegiScore legal opinion, and one of the commonest reasons a property falls from "verifiable" to "high risk" before the buyer has paid a rupee.

Your legal options when GPA fraud comes to light

If you have already bought and then find that a GPA in the chain was forged, revoked or signed by a principal who had died, the remedy has several layers. Talk to a property litigation lawyer at once. The usual structure is:

• 1 · Action: Lodge an FIR under Sec. 420, 467, 468, 471 IPC (forgery and cheating) · Purpose: Starts an official record and a police investigation, and can lead to the fraudster's accounts being frozen
• 2 · Action: Bring a civil suit to declare the sale deed void and have it cancelled · Purpose: The court is asked to hold both the GPA and the sale built on it invalid
• 3 · Action: Seek a temporary injunction against further alienation · Purpose: Keeps the fraudster from selling on to a third party during the case
• 4 · Action: Ask the revenue authority to reverse the mutation in your favour · Purpose: Stops the property tax records from becoming more confused
• 5 · Action: Record lis pendens under Sec. 52 TPA · Purpose: Gives notice to all that the property is disputed (our guide on lis pendens and pending lawsuits on property explains)
• 6 · Action: Apply to attach the seller's assets, if any exist · Purpose: Raises the odds of getting your money back

The honest truth is that recovery is slow, often 4 to 8 years in the civil courts. The criminal track sometimes brings pressure faster, especially when the same seller has defrauded several buyers, because group complaints get attention. Prevention costs far less than remedy.

How banks and NBFCs respond when a loan backed by a GPA fails

Lenders suffer from GPA fraud too. Suppose a home loan or LAP is sanctioned on a property whose chain depends on a forged GPA. When the borrower defaults, the bank discovers the title defect in SARFAESI enforcement. The true owner's legal heirs appear, and the auction is challenged. The bank is left with paper that gives no real security, and a "secured" loan turns into an unsecured claim.

Credit risk teams at banks typically take three steps:

• They tighten the panel lawyer's checklist, adding explicit steps for GPA verification and a requirement for a certified copy from the sub-registrar.
• They audit the loan book again, checking a sample of 5–10% of LAP and self-construction loans that have a GPA somewhere in the chain, to measure exposure.
• They move new sourcing to platform-based verification. Verification by lawyers alone shows a 34% disagreement rate between lawyers, even on one property. Platforms that routinely pull registrar data and run revocation checks leak fewer defects.

Our guide on property verification for banks and NBFCs covers how banks structure title verification at scale.