You should still take a lawyer to a purchase. But you can do enough yourself, in an evening, to know whether a property is worth paying a lawyer to look at — and that filter saves most buyers a great deal of money.
1. The record of rights
Known locally as the parcha or khatian, this is the state's record of who holds the land and how much. In West Bengal it is available through the Banglarbhumi portal against the district, block, mouza and plot number.
You are checking one thing: does the name on it match the person selling to you? Not a relative, not a company they mention, not the previous owner mid-transfer. If it does not match, there is a step missing and you need to know what it is before anything else.
2. The mutation
Mutation is the record being updated after a transfer. An unmutated property means the state still thinks someone else owns it, regardless of what the sale deed says. Buying into that means inheriting the job of sorting it out.
Ask for the mutation certificate and check its date against the deed date. A long gap is not automatically a problem, but it is always worth a question.
3. The deed chain
Ask for the chain of deeds going back thirty years, and read the recitals rather than just the operative clause. The recitals tell you how each owner came to hold the land — purchase, inheritance, partition, gift.
The specific thing to look for is an inheritance in the chain with no partition deed and multiple heirs. That is the single most common source of a claim appearing years later, because one sibling sold what several siblings owned.
4. Encumbrance
An encumbrance certificate lists registered transactions against the property over a period — sales, mortgages, liens. Get one covering at least the last fifteen years, ideally thirty.
What you want is a clean list that matches the deed chain you were shown. What you do not want is a mortgage entry with no corresponding release.
The mismatch that should stop everything
If the area on the record of rights is smaller than the area you are being sold, stop. It usually means part of the plot was already conveyed to someone else and the seller is quoting the original extent.
This is recoverable — sometimes it is a genuine recording error — but it is not something to resolve after paying a booking amount. Resolve it first, in writing.
What we do
Every parcel Fortune Infra sells has been through this process before it reaches the market, and the whole file goes to you before any payment. If a title cannot be cleared, we do not buy the land — which is why we walk away from more parcels than we buy.
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Got a question this did not answer? Call the office — we would rather talk it through than have you act on a guide that does not fit your situation.
