Fake passbook scam begins to take a toll of farmers

One dies of heart attack at a gram sabha in Anantapur

Narayana Setty, who attempted suicide at the Kurnool Collectorate on Monday.—Photo: U. Subrahmanyam

The fake passbook scam across Andhra Pradesh has begun to take a toll of distressed farmers. One farmer died of a heart attack in Anantapur district on Monday upon coming to know that the land he had been cultivating for years had been recorded as belonging to someone else in the revenue records. And in Kurnool district, a farmer tried to commit suicide at the collectorate where he went to plead with the administration that someone was trying to usurp his land by creating a fictitious pattadar passbook to his land with the connivance of the mandal revenue officer MRO) and village revenue officer. He was saved in time.

The fake pattadar passbook scam has been rocking the state ever since it was discovered at multiple locations that scamsters forged thousands of title deeds to farm lands and sold them to farmers who used them to raise fraudulent bank loans. In carrying out their operations, the scamsters also tampered -- with the connivance of revenue officials -- with the database of land ownership. Alarmed by these developments, farmers have been rushing to revenue offices to verify the official records of their lands.

In the Anantapur incident, farmer Krishna Reddy (55) of Vaddevaripalli village in Obuladevara Cheruvu (ODC) mandal is said to have died of a heart attack at a gram sabha being held at the village panchayat office, shocked to discover that revenue records available on the web showed that he was not the owner of his land.

“He slumped to the ground as he was told by the MRO that the land he had been cultivating as ancestral property was not in fact his. He had endured drought, crop losses and debts for the last six years. This was probably too much for him to bear,” said Suryanarayana Reddy, a fellow villager.

Angry villagers staged a dharna in front of the Obuladevara Cheruvu MRO's office demanding that his land be restored to his family.

The Kadiri revenue divisional officer Rajasekhar disagreed that Mr Krishna Reddy had been wrongly informed about his land ownership. “This was a property dispute over ancestral property between Krishna Reddy and another person. We went by the records and told him the position in the records,” he said.

Obuladevara Cheruvu has been the hotspot of farmer distress in Anantapur district, and was the scene of Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi’s padayatra late last week. On Monday, yet another farmer committed suicide unable to bear the burden of debt and the humiliation of being deserted by his family.

Mekala Narendra, 28, had suffered losses in groundnut cultivation over seven years and his wife and children had allegedly left him a few months ago. Burdened by a debt of Rs 3.5 lakh (Rs 50,000 from banks and Rs 3,00,000 from moneylenders), he hanged himself at his house in Konapuram village in Kanganapalli mandal.

In the Kurnool incident, a 73-year-old farmer, Narayana Setty, attempted suicide before the Kurnool collectorate by dousing himself in kerosene, but passersby stopped him from setting himself on fire. Mr Setty, of Peddanelaturu village in Gonegandla mandal, had leased out his 5.70 acres of agricultural land to one Golla Ramulu.

Alleging that Ramulu was trying to usurp his land by creating fictitious pattadar passbooks with the connivance of the tahsildar and village revenue officer, he attempted suicide.