The cousin who was looking after the house has stopped taking calls. The tenant who was to vacate in 2022 is still there and has stopped paying. A search at the sub-registrar's office, which somebody finally did last month, shows a sale deed executed in 2021 by a person holding a power of attorney you signed in 2016 for something else entirely.
Or the least dramatic version, which is the most common. Nothing has happened at all. Nobody has done anything to the property. It has simply been in somebody else's possession for eleven years while everyone was polite about it.
These are the same problem. Indian immovable property is protected by attention, and attention is the thing an owner living abroad cannot easily give it.
The part nobody tells you until it is too late
Most people abroad believe they have twelve years. It is the number everyone repeats, and it comes from Article 65 of the Limitation Act, which gives twelve years for a suit for possession based on title, running from when the defendant's possession becomes adverse.
Where a sale deed has to be set aside, that is the wrong number.
In Mallavva v. Kalsammanavara Kalamma (2024) the Supreme Court held that where the substance of the suit is to regain title by having a sale deed cancelled, even where possession is also claimed, the limitation is the three years under Article 58 and not twelve. The principle is that where several reliefs are sought, limitation follows the main relief. Article 65's twelve years is for the case where the contest is genuinely about adverse possession, not about undoing an instrument.
For an owner abroad the consequence is severe. Three years runs from when the right to sue accrues, broadly when you knew or ought to have known. If a deed was registered in 2021 and you discovered it in 2024, the argument about when you ought to have discovered it is now the whole case. Every year of not looking is a year the other side will use.
Which is why the advice here is always the same, and always sounds impatient. Find out what is on the record now. Not on your next visit. A search of the sub-registrar's records, the mutation register and the property tax record is inexpensive, can be done without you being in India, and is the difference between a case and a regret.
A power of attorney does not transfer property
There is a widespread and durable belief that property in India can be sold on a general power of attorney, an agreement to sell and a will. The arrangement is usually called a GPA sale, and for years it was how a very large amount of property in Delhi and the surrounding states changed hands.
The Supreme Court ended it in Suraj Lamp & Industries (P) Ltd v. State of Haryana, (2012) 1 SCC 656. A general power of attorney, an agreement to sell and a will do not convey title to immovable property. Title passes by a registered deed of conveyance and nothing else.
Two things follow, and they cut in both directions.
If somebody is claiming your property on the strength of a GPA arrangement, they do not have title, whatever the documents say and however much money changed hands. What they may have is possession, and possession is a separate and more difficult problem.
If a person holding your power of attorney executed a registered sale deed, that is a different situation entirely. A registered conveyance executed by an authorised attorney can pass title. The question then is whether the attorney was actually authorised: what the instrument said, whether it was subsisting, whether it had been revoked, and whether the buyer was a bona fide purchaser for value without notice. That is a real fight, and it is won on documents and on timing.
What actually gets filed
A suit for declaration and cancellation of the instrument, where a sale deed, gift deed or power of attorney has been executed or misused. Watch the three-year point above.
A suit for possession, where the property is occupied by a person with no right to remain: an ex-tenant, a licensee, a relative who was permitted to stay.
A suit for permanent injunction, frequently the most urgent filing, restraining the other side from selling, creating third-party rights, or altering the property while the main case is decided. Where there is a live threat of sale this is what gets filed first, sometimes within days.
A partition suit, where the property is ancestral or jointly held and one co-owner is dealing with it as if it were theirs alone.
A caveat and a police complaint, where a forged document is involved. Forgery of a document of title and its use are criminal offences, and a criminal complaint alongside the civil suit changes the other side's calculations considerably. It is not a substitute for the civil case, because the criminal court cannot restore your title, but it is often what brings someone to the table.
An application to the sub-registrar and the revenue authorities, to record the dispute and stop further mutation.
What you can do from where you are
Nearly all of it.
- A registered revocation of any power of attorney you have given, with notice to the attorney, publication where the circumstances warrant it, and intimation to the sub-registrar. An unrevoked power of attorney given to a relative in 2014 is a loaded weapon lying in a drawer.
- A search and title report on the property as the record stands today. This is the single most useful expenditure in this area.
- Mutation and property tax records in your name and kept current. These do not by themselves prove title, but their absence is used against you and their presence is used for you.
- A caveat in the relevant courts, so no order is passed against you without notice.
- Documented correspondence with the occupant. Where a relative or tenant is in possession, what decides the case years later is whether their possession was permissive, and permissive possession is established by letters, notices and replies rather than by recollection.
- Filing on a power of attorney. Suits are instituted, prosecuted and evidence given through a properly drafted power of attorney and, where necessary, video recording. The witness who must be produced is the person with personal knowledge of the facts, which is a drafting and planning question at the outset rather than a surprise at the evidence stage.
What tends to go wrong
Waiting for the next trip to India. Every one of these problems is cheaper in month two than in year four, and the limitation clock does not pause for annual leave.
Relying on a relative to look into it. Not because relatives are dishonest, but because a person who is not a party and not instructed has no standing to obtain records, no obligation to report accurately, and no reason to give you bad news early.
Sending a legal notice and stopping. A notice with nothing behind it teaches the other side that nothing is coming. Where a notice goes out, the next step should already be prepared.
Settling without documenting. Family settlements in property are entirely legitimate and frequently the best outcome available. An oral understanding reached over a weekend in Delhi is not one. It should be recorded, and where it deals with immovable property, registered.
Treating possession as a detail. It is not a detail. In Indian property litigation the person in possession has time, inertia and the burden of proof working for them. Getting an injunction, and where possible getting possession restored early, is worth more than a strong case argued late.
Send me the documents
A sale deed, a power of attorney, a will, a tax receipt, an old notice, or simply the address and what you know. I will establish what the record shows, where limitation stands, and what should be filed first. If a sale is imminent or the property is being altered, say so.
Questions people actually ask
Property was sold on a power of attorney I gave years ago. Can I undo it?
Possibly. The answer turns on what the instrument authorised, whether it was subsisting, what was actually registered, who the buyer was, and critically when you discovered it. The three-year point makes this urgent rather than merely important.
A GPA sale was done. Doesn't that mean it is invalid?
An agreement to sell with a GPA and a will does not transfer title, following Suraj Lamp. But if a registered conveyance was executed by an attorney, title may well have passed, and the case is about authority rather than about the form of the transaction. The distinction matters enormously and it is decided by the documents.
My tenant has been there since 2015 and stopped paying in 2021. Has he acquired rights?
A tenant's possession is permissive, and permissive possession does not become adverse merely by continuing. What creates difficulty is where the tenancy was never documented, or the documents cannot be found, or rent was received in cash. Adverse possession is for the person claiming it to prove, and it is proved with difficulty, but it is proved more easily against an owner who was absent and silent.
My brother has been living in the family house and says our father gave it to him orally.
An oral gift of immovable property does not transfer title under the general law. The practical questions are what the revenue and municipal records show, who has been paying, what was said in writing, and how long this has been going on.
Can I sell from abroad?
Yes, through a properly drafted and executed power of attorney, attested at the Indian Mission or apostilled depending on the country. What the instrument must contain, and how the proceeds are then repatriated, should be settled before the buyer is found rather than after.
Do I have to come to India to fight this?
For most stages, no. Where you must give evidence in person, that is normally one appearance, and it is planned for.
How much can be established before I decide whether to fight?
Almost all of it. What is on the record, who is in possession, what instruments exist, and where limitation stands can all be established at the outset. The decision whether to litigate should be taken with that in front of you rather than before it.