This has happened to us in Goa We owned a plot of land in Rawanfond near Navelim where we
had jack fruit trees cashew trees and many other trees it was open land not fenced properly. One day the grand mother of this man Andrew (this is in late 50's) came to my mother and begged and fell on her knees crying to my mother that her sister-in -law asked her to move out of the sister-in -law's house. My saintly mum felt sorry for this lady and let her build a small hummpi (a hut ) in our ancestral land. By the way my father was in distant Africa. She built a small hut and slowly encroached further and further into our land. She got married and moved her husband into her hut She could not be get children. so she adopted a girl (a poske). In time this adopted girl got married and had a boy and a girl This boy became a man who is called Andrew He somehow got his name as Mundkar and threatened us and took us to court saying he wants the whole property for himself without paying us a penny. He took us to court, many times and we had to hire a lawyer to represent us costing us a lot of money, and at times we had to fly to Goa from U.K. to face the courts in Goa. This has been carrying on from the fifties and still it has not been resolved We were fed up to our back teeth frequently falling out with my brothers and this tested our unity. We sold part of the property to the builders, leaving three hundred square metres for Andrew. We have not given or sold those three hundred metres to Andrew we will fight again at a later date. Why should we give these three hundred metres to a person who has not paid one penny in rent and ate all the produce of the land This is our ancestral land how my ancestors must have suffered and saved to buy and save these lands for their children. And then we have these people usurp other people's property. Andrew runs a transport business in Goa and apparently they have a family house in Curtorim. With troubles like these we were forced to sell our ancestral lands for next to nothing. Ignatius Fernandes.
