After ‘B’ khata, there’s a scam in e-khata, too.
A computer operator from the Harohalli town municipal council has been arrested along with another person for stealing the login credentials of a gram panchayat official and illegally issuing as many as 36 e-khatas.
Bharath S, the computer operator, and his friend Guruprasad H N were arrested by officers from the northeast CEN crime police station. A panchayat development officer (PDO) is also said to be involved but his identity has not been revealed.
Police said Bharath and Guruprasad had issued e-khatas to 36 sites located at Channahalli near Devanahalli on Bengaluru’s northern outskirts.
The fraud took place between September 17 and September 20 last year and was detected by the PDO of the Channahalli gram panchayat. Vasanth Kumar H D, an officer in Devanahalli taluk panchayat, subsequently filed a police complaint but didn’t take any names.
A senior police officer explained how the fraud was perpetrated.
The executive officer of the taluk panchayat gives a login ID to the PDO to approve an e-khata. Bharath, the computer operator, hacked the executive officer’s login credentials and handed them to Guruprasad to approve e-khatas. The e-khatas were issued for sites belonging to two individuals — Tirupati Reddy and Ajay Narne — and didn’t carry the PDO’s digital signature.
An e-khata is nothing but an electronic form of your physical khata. It helps you pay property taxes online.
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Published 17 March 2022, 19:22 IST