NRI Fights Fraud: Australian NRI Says Forged Power of Attorney Being Used to Steal His Ancestral Punjab Land
NRI Fights Fraud: An Australian NRI says a forged Power of Attorney, confirmed fake by the Indian Consulate and Australian Passport Office, is being used to seize his ancestral Punjab land.
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, August 15
When 79-year-old Balbir Singh Dhillon writes that “no NRI should be left without the protection of the law simply because they are not physically present in India,” it isn’t a rhetorical flourish. It’s the closing line of a formal letter he says he was forced to send directly to Gaurav Yadav, the Director General of Police, Punjab. And he said he did it after months of silence from the very police wing meant to help NRIs in exactly this situation.
NRI Fights Fraud: An FIR has now been registered by the Punjab Police, naming Satwinder Singh, alias Bhinda of SBS Nagar district under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 465 (forgery), 467 (forgery of valuable security), 468 (forgery for cheating), and 471 (using a forged document as genuine). The complainant is Balbir Singh Dhillon, 79, born in village Kulam, Tehsil SBS Nagar, and now residing in Australia.
A Document Built Entirely on Fiction
NRI Fights Fraud: At the centre of the case is a General Power of Attorney that Dhillon says he never signed, never authorised, and had never even heard of. That was until he learned it was being used against him in an Indian court.
According to the detailed complaint, Dhillon submitted to Punjab Police chief that the GPA purports to have been executed by him in Australia and attested by the Consulate General of India in Melbourne.
He says it is being relied upon by a third party in specific performance proceedings before an Indian court, to claim the right to purchase and take over his ancestral land in Kulam.
Dhillon’s own account catalogues just how far the fabrication goes. He says the names listed for the grantor and his father bear no resemblance to his actual name or his father’s. The document claims he was born in Canberra while he was born in village Kulam.
The Australian passport details cited in the GPA don’t match his current passport or any passport he has ever held. The Melbourne residential address named in the document, he says, does not exist.
The law firm listed as having prepared and witnessed the GPA, he says, is not a real, registered firm in Australia. And every individual named as a party or witness to the document, Dhillon says, is a stranger to him with their passport details apparently digitally manipulated as well.
Adding a layer of official-looking legitimacy to the fabrication, Dhillon’s complaint notes that the fraudulent GPA also carries an embossment or endorsement purportedly from the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, SBS Nagar.
Confirmed as Fake, Officially
NRI Fights Fraud: What separates this case from a typical he-said-she-said property dispute is the paper trail Dhillon assembled before he ever filed his complaint.
He says the Consulate General of India in Melbourne confirmed in writing, by email in February 2026, that the General Power of Attorney was never issued or attested by the Consulate at all. This was in direct contradiction to what the opposing party is arguing in the Indian court proceedings.
Separately, the Australian Passport Office in Brisbane, part of that country’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, confirmed in an official letter in February 2026 that the passport images used in connection with the GPA are not valid Australian passports and show clear signs of digital manipulation, recommending specifically that the matter be reported to police.
In other words: before Punjab Police ever registered this FIR, an Indian and an Australian government body had already independently concluded, in writing, that the document was a fake.
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Months of Silence, Then a Letter to the Top
NRI Fights Fraud: The part of this case likely to draw the most attention isn’t the forgery itself, but what Dhillon says happened when he tried to report it.
He says he lodged multiple formal complaints with several Punjab Police authorities, and that despite the weight of evidence already in hand (including the two government confirmations) no FIR was registered, no investigation was initiated, and he received no acknowledgment or response of any kind.
Frustrated by what he describes as a serious dereliction of duty, Dhillon wrote directly to the Director General of Police in a detailed formal complaint. In it, he laid out the fraud element by element, cited the legal principle that registering an FIR is mandatory once information disclosing a cognisable offence is received, and argued that the inaction hadn’t just been a bureaucratic lapse; it had actively allowed the people behind the forged GPA to continue relying on it in live court proceedings to try to take his land.
His letter to the DGP asked for seven specific things: registration of an FIR without further delay; assignment of the case to a senior officer with clear accountability and a reporting timeline; a specific inquiry into how the fraudulent GPA came to carry the Deputy Commissioner’s office endorsement, and whether anyone connected to that office was complicit or negligent; protective measures to prevent his ancestral land from being transferred or encumbered while the investigation proceeds; a review of the conduct of officers who had failed to act on his earlier complaints, with disciplinary action where warranted; formal use of the Consulate and Passport Office confirmations in the investigation; and written acknowledgment of his complaint within fourteen days.
He signed it, pointedly, as a 79-year-old NRI who had done everything within his power from Australia to expose the fraud — and who was asking, in the end, simply not to be denied the protection of the law because of distance.
NRI Fights Fraud: From Complaint to FIR
Following the instructions from the DGP, the concerned police station have registered an FIR against Satwinder Singh alias Bhinda.
The allegations of forgery are supported by the two written government confirmations Dhillon has cited, but North Desk has not independently verified those documents, nor confirmed the current status of the specific performance case in which the forged GPA is reportedly being used. This report will be updated with any response from the accused, the DC’s office, or developments in the investigation and the underlying court case.
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