Validity of an agreement when the original agreement has been destroyed

harish chandra (Querist) 14 July 2013 This query is : Resolved
Dear Sirs,
My father entered into a sale agreement of our agriculture land of rupees twenty five lakhs in rajasthan on stamp paper of rupees hundred in 1998 with a person. After signing the agreement, my father took opinion from some advocate and he told my father that as you own only half of that land and for other half, you have POA from your father, and as in that agreement there was no mention of POA, and there was no time limit given for performance of agreement by either party, this agreement is not valid. My father asked the purchaser to return back the agreement, which he gave back and the same was cancelled and destroyed with mutual consent. Meanwhile the purchaser kept photocopy of the said agreement. After this my father sold the land which he owned (not of my grandfathers land) to five persons, other than above purchaser separately without any prior agreement, as and when they paid full payment in 1999, after expiry of my grandfather. All of above purchasers including first one with whom the agreement was made and cancelled belong to same group of persons. After that my father sold some remaining parts of land to three other persons between 2003 to 2008. Now after 14 years one of above purchaser (other than the original purchaser, who entered into the cancelled agreement) has filed a suit against my father on behalf of photocopy of that cancelled agreement, that my father has not performed the agreement and fraudulently sold the land to some other persons. As stated above, that agreement was destroyed with mutual consent but that group of purchaser have given witness that the original agreement was returned to my father (that is not true). Now the police is harassing my father and threatening to arrest him. My question is when no original agreement exist, can a photocopy be taken as an evidence to file a suit u/s 420 the other relevant sections of IPC. Can even after 14 years of destroying that document, party can claim that the agreement still exists and force the seller to perform on that basis. I again wish to clarify-
1. The original agreement on Rs 100/- stamp paper does not exist
2. As the said agreement was of entire land which my father did not own, and there was no mention of POA, it was void ab initio, as my father was not in capacity to enter into that contract, hence he cancelled the same.
3. There was no time limit mentioned to perform the agreement, that was one of the reason my father cancelled the same.
4. The person who filed the suit is other than the person who entered into agreement with my father.
5. That agreement was neither notarized nor registered.
Please guide us what recourse is available to thrash this suit?

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