Four tahsildars booked for fabricating land records

 The Lokayukta police have registered a case against four former tahsildars of Devanahalli taluk in Bangalore Rural district for fabricating records and illegally granting pricey government lands to private persons. 

The four former tahsildars, according to a press release issued by the Lokayukta here on Monday, had amended RTC and mutation cases and  colluded with private individuals in granting them government lands. The officials against whom the case has been registered are: L C Nagaraju, Asha Parveen, Mariyappa Gowda and Sampath Kumar. 

They had created fake documents for government lands in Devanahalli, Rayasandra, Vishwanathapura, Hosahalli, Chikkanahalli, Hegganahalli, Koramangala and Beerasandra in Kasaba hobli. The Lokayukta police have taken into custody the documents related to the land scam and are scrutinising them, the release said. 

Criminal proceedings

An inquiry committee of the Survey Department has recommended criminal proceedings against the four officials from the revenue department. 

The then commissioner of Survey Department, V Ponnuraj, had ordered an inquiry after receiving complaints about illegal grant of government land. 

The commissioner of Survey Department submitted the inquiry report to the principal secretary, Revenue Department, on June 2, 2014, recommending criminal proceedings against the said officials. The scam took shape when Land Records and Revenue Departments were merged at the district level as per the recommendation of the Administrative Reforms Commission. 

A circular in this regard was also issued by delegating powers of survey officers to revenue officers. 

Subsequently, the State government issued a circular on August 18, 2008, to expedite clearing of ‘Podi’ land cases and another circular on August 11, 2009, to index and catalogue grant lands. The officials allegedly misused this power and created fake documents as though the lands were granted to private persons. However, there were no original documents to substantiate these grants, the report stated. 

The committee had verified the documents on April 29 and 30, 2014, and submitted a detailed report which recommended criminal proceedings under Section 192 (a) of Karnataka Land Revenue Act.