On January 9, about 100 farmers from Rampur village in Toguta mandal of the district came to the collectorate and staged dharna. The agitation was led by Appanapally Anjaneyulu, husband of Rampur sarpanch A. Shyamala.
Two days later, on January 11, Mr. Anjaneyulu was arrested by the police on the charge of forging documents and trying to grab government land and, ironically, sell it to the government. The government has been offering compensation on a par with patta land if the assigned land is in ‘usable condition’.
It was learnt that Mr. Anjaneyulu, in connivance with some revenue officials, was able to produce D Form patta papers in the name of some villagers. He reportedly struck a deal with likely beneficiaries to part with a share of the compensation once the government purchased their lands and credited the compensation to their bank accounts. Patta papers were prepared for as many as 44.37 acres in survey number 752 of the village. The planning was so perfect that details of about 21 acres were updated on the revenue website so that higher officials found nothing to suspect. Revenue officials, however, grew suspicious when some people from Rampur and Vaddera Colony repeatedly came to the office seeking compensation and, on close scrutiny of the documents, they appeared to have been created recently. This made the officials verify the records.
The details submitted by those seeking compensation were found to be fake, prompting action by officials immediately. The officials arrested Anjaneyulu and Seripally Kanakaraju in the case. Two VROs were suspended while a mandal revenue officer had already surrendered to the State revenue department.
It was suspected that a mandal level officer was responsible for creating forged documents. Officials, in private discussions, admitted that similar efforts took place in places like Etigaddakishtapur, Brahamana Banjerpally, Toguta, Tukkapur and Laksmapur but fraud was averted at the last minute due to alertness of officials. “A total of 1,314 acres of assigned land, in addition to 8,000 acres of patta land and about 4,000 acres of government land, is being acquired for the proposed Mallannasagar project. Coming to assigned lands, we have paid compensation only for 200 acres so far and are double-checking the documents before finalising the payment,” P. Venkataram Reddy, Collector, told The Hindu .
