The pattern is always the same. Someone was allowed to live in the property to look after it. Years passed. Then a letter arrives, or a neighbour calls, and the person in occupation is telling people the property is his. The instinct is to wait for the next trip to India. That instinct is the problem.
Why permission matters so much
A caretaker put into possession with your consent occupies permissively. Time running in his favour does not begin merely because he has been there a long while. It begins when his possession becomes adverse, which means open, hostile and to your knowledge, asserting a right against you rather than under you. That is why the letter or the neighbour's call matters: it may be the very moment that starts the clock, and it is the moment you can prove.
What runs from there is the twelve year period the Limitation Act, 1963 gives for a suit for possession of immovable property based on title, computed from the date the defendant's possession becomes adverse to the plaintiff. And the Act does something harsher than merely barring the remedy. It provides that at the determination of the period limited for instituting a suit for possession, the right to the property is itself extinguished. You do not just lose the case. You lose the property.
Nor is adverse possession only a defence. The Supreme Court held in 2019 that a person who has perfected title by adverse possession can maintain a suit on that basis rather than only raise it as a shield. Our guide on how adverse possession works in Indian law sets out what has to be proved and over what period.
The Specific Relief Act, 1963 gives a person dispossessed of immovable property without his consent, otherwise than in due course of law, a suit to recover possession notwithstanding any other title that may be set up. It is fast because title is not tried. It is also unforgiving: no suit under it may be brought after six months from the date of dispossession, none lies against the Government, and no appeal or review is available from the decree. If you have been physically shut out, that clock is running in months, not years.
What to do in the next four weeks
- Pull the record. The encumbrance certificate, the khata or revenue entries, the tax receipts and the title deeds. Our guide on viewing the encumbrance certificate online in Karnataka shows how to get part of it from abroad, and it also tells you whether anything has been registered against the property that you do not know about.
- Find the document that created the permission. The letter appointing him, the salary or rent record, the messages, the electricity account. Evidence that possession began with your consent is the single most valuable thing in the case, because it puts the burden on him to show when and how it turned hostile.
- Write, and keep proof of service. A notice through an advocate here, recording the basis on which he was let in, terminating any permission, and calling for possession. Where the arrangement was a lease, the Transfer of Property Act, 1882 sets out how a lease determines, including by notice, and includes forfeiture where the lessee renounces his character as lessee by setting up title in a third person or claiming title in himself. A caretaker who claims to own the property has usually done precisely that.
- File. A suit for possession and injunction on the basis of your title, in the court where the property is situate. Interim protection matters more than the final decree in the early stage, particularly an order restraining any transfer or construction while the suit is pending.
- Instruct someone who can appear. You can run the case through a power of attorney holder, but an attorney can depose only to facts within his own knowledge, so on questions such as when the permission was given and what was said, your own evidence will be needed. Plan for that from the start, including by video where the court permits.
Things not to do
- Do not attempt self help. Cutting off water or power, changing locks or sending people to remove him invites exactly the six month remedy described above, this time against you.
- Do not turn a civil dispute into a police complaint reflexively. Criminal trespass under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 covers entering or unlawfully remaining on property in another's possession with intent to intimidate, insult or annoy the person in possession, and it has its place. Dressing a possession dispute as a crime tends to be seen for what it is.
- Do not sign anything to make it go away. A settlement, a release or even a receipt drafted by the other side can be the document that defeats you later.
- Do not leave the property unsupervised again. Whoever holds the keys next should hold them under a written, dated arrangement with a fixed term, and our guide on the verification checklist for property disputes sets out the records worth keeping current whether or not there is a dispute.
The underlying lesson
Distance is what makes these claims possible, and paper is what defeats them. A property held by an absent owner needs an annual routine: tax paid in your name, the khata current, the encumbrance position checked, and a written arrangement with whoever is in occupation.