The civic body has lost all documents of four of its leased properties, worth Rs 150 crore.

The lease period of Society cinema, one of the four properties, expired in October 2005, while that of two other cinema houses — Roxy and Regal — and Futnani Chambers will come to an end soon. Each lease was for 99 years.

In the absence of the documents, which were supposed to be in the “safe custody” of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation’s estate department, the authorities cannot claim back the premises after the expiry of the lease period.

“We cannot even establish whether the lease was for 99 years or 999 years. There is nothing in our records to back our claim,” said a civic official.

Director-general (town planning) Dipankar Sinha “distinctly” remembers that the lease records of Roxy, Society, Regal and Futnani Chambers were in the surveyor’s office in the estate department when he left the town planner’s job to join the conservancy wing in 2001. What happened after that is a mystery that the civic bosses have not been able to crack.

The shocking revelation about the missing files came when the estate department, on an order from municipal commissioner Alapan Bandyopadhyay, was searching for records to prepare a status report on leased properties.

“We are not sure exactly how many such files are missing,” mayor Bikash Ranjan Bhattacharyya said on Tuesday. “For long, a number of interest groups have been active in the civic body. The files must have been misplaced by them.”

Sources, however, pointed out that had senior officials been alert, the scam could have been unearthed at least three years ago.

The civic authorities had closed down Society shortly before its lease term was to end on October 9, 2005, as a part of the cinema’s parapet had collapsed.

The hall management moved court against the order. The lease expired while the hearing was on, prompting the civic body to plead for a ruling restoring its rights to the property.

“The hall management then asked for the original lease record. The civic body failed to produce it and kept praying for time. The case is still pending. A more vigilant administration would have ordered a search for the documents of all leased properties,” said an official.

A civic law officer said: “Time and again, we have asked the estate department for the original lease deed of Society, but we are yet to get it.”

Though the key documents are missing, some information about the leased premises can be culled from the CMC Year Book, an almanac of all civic departments.

The Year Book of 1991-92 and 1992-93 listed 49 leased properties. But the date of expiry of the lease was mentioned only for 34 premises.

According to the Year Book, Society was leased out to Empire Theatre, while Futnani was leased out to Hindusthan Cooperative Insurance Society.