CHITTOOR: Five government officials, including a sub-registrar, a Mandal revenue officer (MRO) and three village revenue officers (VRO) were arrested on charges of facilitating a land-grabbing scam in the region and registering around seven sites worth Rs 50 crore under various names, police said on Saturday.
The officials have been identified as J Sridhara Gupta, a sub-registrar in Chittoor, Subramanyam, an MRO in Puttur, Dhanunjaya, M Siva Narayana and K Babu—all VROs in Vepanjeri, Nandaluru, and Iruvaram, respectively.
Earlier, the police had arrested seven members of a gang for their involvement in the case. The gang members were: N Rajasekhar Reddy (33), his wife D Yamuna (23) and N Surendra Babu (36)—from Thavanampalli Mandal—D Karunakar Reddy (47) of Yadamarri Mandal, V Jayachandra Reddy (38) and D Sekhar (44) from GD Nellore Mandal and S Ashok Kumar (38) from Chittoor town. Chittoor DSP N Sudhakar Reddy said the gang used to target properties, either unclaimed or owned by Non-Resident Indians (NRIs), in and around Chittoor.
They would create fake sale deeds and seals. The land-grabbing activities came to light after the gang created fake records for a 2.7-acre land belonging to one Dinesh Kumar in Chittoor’s Kattamanchi. The accused, however, did not realise that the owner’s son lived in the same area.
The owner’s son was informed that a few people were trying to sell his father’s land, claiming they had documents proving they owned the property. hen Dinesh Kumar confronted them, the accused allegedly threatened him, following which he approached the Chittoor I Town Police, who took up the investigation.
Gang used to forge signatures of landowners
Following the arrest of the gang, Chittoor I Town CI Narasimha Raju and SI Suman led special teams to probe the case. Investigation revealed that the gang would forge signatures of the owners, sub-registrars and witnesses to transfer the properties to their names. They even obtained bank loans on some sites and divided the money among themselves.
Elaborating on how police zeroed in on the government officials, the DSP said, “Document writer Surendra Babu and real estate brokers Jaya Chandra Reddy, Sekhar, Ashok Kumar, Ebinejar, Pupathamma, S Murali, Siva Kumar, Chitti Babu and Nitish from Chittoor tried to grab land in Kattamanchi revenue area in Chittoor Mandal, belonging to one Balagurunadham. With the support of the three VROs and MRO Subrahmanyam, the gang tried to register the land in the name of Ebinejar and Pupathamma without any documents. Against this backdrop, the revenue officials were arrested. The probe is underway.”
GANG OF 7 FORGED SIGNATURES
The probe revealed that the gang would forge signatures of the owners, sub-registrars and witnesses to transfer the properties to their names. They even obtained bank loans on some sites and divided the money among themselves