Availing loan from a suspended policeman turned a farmer of Annaram village in Karimnagar district into a hawker at a toddy compound.
Fifty-six-year-old Potharla Gattaiah was an independent farmer till four years ago. Now he goes around the streets of Karimnagar city in the evenings, selling snacks or soda bottles. He spends most of his time at a toddy compound selling snacks prepared by his wife Laxmi.
“Either we sell snacks or both of us go to work as daily labourers. Sometimes Laxmi goes to nearby houses to work as a maidservant,” says a gloomy Gattaiah. His newly married son shifted to Hyderabad to work as delivery boy for an e-commerce company. Cultivating four acres of agricultural land in his village of Manakondur mandal, 20 km away from Karimnagar city, he used to live happily with his family. When a villager put for sale an acre of land for ₹ 12 lakh, he thought of acquiring it as it was close to his piece of land. But he didn’t have that much money.
“I approached some friends, when a broker Kanakaiah said he would arrange money through a policeman A. Mohan Reddy,” the farmer recalled. He took the money and purchased the land. In a few months, he realised that 4% interest was too heavy for him. He had to pay ₹ 48,000 every month towards interest. When he failed to pay the sum for a few months, the policeman allegedly threatened to take serious action.
“Mohan Reddy forcibly got my two-room house of 200 square yards on the city outskirts registered on the name of his relative I. Sangeetha through a Sale-cum-General Power of Attorney deed”, he said.
Again a year later, the policeman allegedly asked Gattaiah to fraudulently register 3.3 acres of his agricultural land in the village on ‘his associate’ Pulgam Mallesham’s name.
Having heard that some victims of Mohan Reddy, who is presently in prison facing a string of criminal cases, got back their properties, he is hoping one day he too will get back his properties.
The husband and the wife get into an argument or fight every other day blaming each other for taking money from the policeman.
