Canada-Based Owner Returns to Find Strangers Living in His Punjab Flat, Armed With What He Calls a Forged Ownership Claim
NRI Flat Occupied by someone else: A Canada-based NRI returnes to Punjab and finds strangers occupying his flat, backed by a court stay order allegedly obtained using a forged ownership document built from an old rental agreement.
North Desk Correspondent
Mohali, August 31
NRI Flat Occupied: For an NRI who spends most of the year abroad, a rented-out flat back home is often left in the hands of trust — a sibling to manage it, a tenant to occupy it, and the assumption that whatever changes happen while you’re away will be the kind you’re told about. An FIR registered this week in Punjab describes exactly the opposite: an owner who returned to find his flat occupied by people he’d never agreed to let in, backed by paperwork he says was fabricated from something that was never a sale in the first place.
The FIR, registered under Section 329(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita — which deals with house-trespass or house-breaking committed with the intent to commit an offence — names Harjinder Kaur, daughter of Gurmeet Singh, of Sadar Kurali, along with the original tenant Lesley Rao, her daughter Steffy Rao, and one or two other unidentified individuals. The complainant is Sandeep Singh, a Canada-based NRI with permanent roots in Bhangra, Hoshiarpur.
A Flat, Rented Out, and Left in Trust
NRI Flat Occupied: According to Sandeep Singh’s statement, he co-owns a ground-floor flat — Flat 2, Aura Avenue, near Omega Apartments, Khanpur, Kharar — jointly with his brother Navdeep Singh and sister Rupinderjeet Kaur, all NRIs. The flat had been rented out to Lesley Rao since 2020-21, on an informal arrangement renewed annually, with his brother Maninder handling matters locally on the family’s behalf.
In July 2025, the FIR states, the tenant’s daughter, Steffy Rao, messaged Maninder saying they were vacating the flat and asking him to collect the keys along with the flat’s belongings. Maninder went to the property, took photographs documenting its condition, collected the keys, and locked it up — by all accounts, an unremarkable end to a five-year tenancy.
Eight Months of Silence, Then a Locked Door That Wasn’t Locked
NRI Flat Occupied: Sandeep Singh flew in from Canada in February 2026 and settled at the family’s village home in Muktsar. On April 7, 2026, he and Maninder went to check on the Kharar flat — a routine visit to a property that, as far as they knew, had sat empty since the tenant left the previous July.
What they found instead, the FIR states, was that the flat’s locks had been broken, and a woman — Harjinder Kaur — along with her daughter, were living inside. When the brothers asked who they were and why they were there, Harjinder Kaur allegedly refused to step outside to talk, responding only from behind the door.
Sandeep Singh told her he was the owner of the flat. She, in turn, allegedly claimed that she had purchased the property and that a court had granted her a stay order protecting her possession — producing documents on the spot to back the claim. The FIR describes the brothers as stunned: they say they never sold the flat, never agreed to any such transaction, and had no knowledge that any sale had ever been claimed.
NRI Flat Occupied: From Rental Agreement to “Ownership”
The heart of the complaint is what Sandeep Singh says he pieced together afterward. He alleges that the original tenant Lesley Rao, her daughter Steffy Rao, Harjinder Kaur, and one or two other unidentified individuals conspired together to convert what had only ever been a rental agreement into a fabricated ownership document — and used that fabricated paper to obtain a “kachha” (interim, non-final) court stay order, giving their occupation of the flat a false appearance of legal cover.
Using that cover, the FIR alleges, the group broke into the flat and moved in, and in the process made off with furniture and household items that had been left inside — a bed, sofa, refrigerator, table, chairs, and other belongings.
Sandeep Singh’s complaint states plainly that the accused have no actual right to the property, and that they built their claim on a genuine rental agreement that they turned into a forged one — with no authentic sale document existing at all, despite what was shown to the court to obtain the stay.
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