Home Dehradun Main accused in tea estate land scam arrested; what about guilty officers?

Main accused in tea estate land scam arrested; what about guilty officers?

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By Arun Pratap Singh

Dehradun, 18 Aug:  The Police have finally been able to nab the main accused, Advocate Imran, in the fake registry scam related to 12.5 acres of Tea Estate land in Raipur Block. He has been arrested along with a junior employee of the Sub Registrar office, Ajay Chhetri.

It may be recalled that arrests had been made in this case some days ago when two timber merchants from Dibrugarh in Assam were taken into custody. However, the bigger question is whether a land scam of this magnitude (involving 12.5 acres of tea estate land) could have been possible without involvement of senior officers in the Sub Registrar’s office, senior level district administration officers and local revenue officers like the Patwaris and Tehsildars of that time.

It is pertinent to remind here that the state government itself has admitted to large scale fake registries having been done in Dehradun, Haridwar and other places during the course of the past several years by replacing the original land records with fake papers. While this could have been done with the connivance of some junior level officials in isolated cases, obviously such a scam could not have gone on for years without the involvement of some senior officers and maybe even politicians.

So far, two junior officials including Ajay Chhetri have been arrested but the police are yet to lay their hands on any senior level officer. The only action taken against some senior level officers has been their transfer.

Actually, Dehradun has become a hub of land frauds. Not only is government land being encroached upon on regular basis and sold to locals and outsiders through fraudulent sale deeds duly registered at the Sub Registrar’s office, but also private land of many, including absentee landlords, is being grabbed and sold. There are a large number of such cases where the same piece of land has been sold to several persons by the alleged property dealers through manipulation of Khasra numbers.

Readers will be aware that Khasra numbers of the land keep getting changed over a period of time and the fraudulent property leaders manage to manipulate the old and new Khasra numbers while registering sale deeds. It has to be a major responsibility of the Registrar’s Office to ensure that the same piece of land is not being sold to several persons through different registries within a space of some days or weeks.

In this particular case, Ajay Chhetri and the main accused, Advocate Imran, were produced in the court of Dehadun CJM 1 and have been sent to judicial custody. Though the SSP claims that many white collared persons are also on the radar in this case and may be arrested soon, the question is whether the police have the will to lay hand on prominent persons.

The Gangster Act has been imposed on several property leaders and realtors in Dehradun in different cases. However, despite the provision of attachment of the properties of the persons in question, it is in very few cases this has actually been done.

The need of the hour is to go through all the land records and sale deeds to ensure genuineness of the documents. The sale deeds are stated to be complete only when certified copies are issued by the Sub Registrar’s Office. According to the official sources, most such frauds have happened by manipulating old land records of the period 1986 to 1999. Unless there is a strong political and administrative will, such a massive exercise is not possible.