JOIN USThe Special Lokayukta Court on Wednesday granted bail to two sub-registrars and several agents who were arrested following a surprise raid conducted by the Lokayukta police.
On February 24, five sub-registrar offices at K R Puram, Kengeri, Jayanagar, J P Nagar and Devanahalli were searched.
While searches at the K R Puram and Kengeri offices yielded unaccounted cash of Rs 1.68 lakh, the offices at J P Nagar and Jayanagar yielded lesser amounts. The sub-registrar office at Devanahalli yielded nothing.
The sub-registrars of K R Puram and Kengeri, Shanthamurthy and N A Ramesh, respectively, were taken into custody immediately, along with 15 touts.
All of them were given conditional bail on Wednesday and the middlemen have been directed not to enter the sub-registrar offices and inform the nearest police station if they have to enter the offices.
A majority of the violations were found at the KR Puram office. When the Lokayukta police entered the office, they found touts writing the forms for encumbrance certificates and making entries into registers. About Rs 79,000 were found with the touts and a tout named Rajesh, even had an identity card supposedly issued by the sub-registrar office.
The card had a fake signature and seal of the sub-registrar office to give it ‘authenticity’.
When questioned, sub-registrar Shanthamurthy said he did not know any of these people, though they were sitting in his office and filling forms, a job supposed to be done by the clerks.
Was given clean chit
Upa Lokayukta S B Majage had made a surprise visit to the same office a couple of months ago and scrutinised all the documents. “We tallied the amounts available with the documents and they matched,” Majage said. Declaring there were no irregularities in the office, a clean chit was given by Majage.