Murder-Accused Wanted Deed for Land Worth Rs 20 Cr from Slain Tahsildar

 Visakhapatnam: Issues related to a land deal for Rs 12 crore in a prime locality of Madhurawada resulted in the gory murder of Bondapalli tahsildar Sanapala Ramanaih on Friday night, revenue department sources said.

Hints are also that the land mafia’s nexus with officials are leading to such situations.

The accused, Murari Subrahmanyam Ganga Rao, on behalf of an NRI woman, applied for conveyance deed for 1,600 square yards of land under survey number 381 in Madhurawada. This parcel of land was part of 6.85 acres in the same survey, revenue sources said.

The woman had obtained some deeds. Ganga Rao struck a deal with her for 1,600 square yards of this land. The entire 6.85 acre land was under section 22A.

While the file was under process, tahsildar Ramanaiah was transferred to Bondapalli in Vizianagaram district.

According to the police, Ganga Rao has been meeting the tahsildar regularly to speed up his file. This was his only hope to get out of a financial mess he was in. Due to debts, his house had been seized and sold in auction by a bank.

On the fateful day, Ganga Rao wanted Ramanaiah to sign some papers with backdated documents, but the tahsildar refused to do this,” the revenue sources claimed.

A former tahsildar noted, “After the land prices went up, real estate agents wanted precious lands by taking advantage of the loopholes in the law.”

Former Visakhapatnam collector Praveen Kumar, in a report to the government, cited a curious case. Documents related to government land worth`4,000 crore in Visakhapatnam had gone missing, years ago, from the Visakhapatnam rural tahsildar’s Chinagadili office, where Ramanaiah worked.

As a solution to this problem and to protect government land, former chief minister Chandrababu Naidu set up an SIT on the insistence of his cabinet colleague Ayyanna Patrdu.

Chief minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy too later appointed an SIT. But the reports of both the SITs were kept in cold storage and no action was taken due to massive play of vested interests.

“The revenue officials should also share the blame for the growth of the land mafia. In every tahsildar office, one would see top realtors sitting in his cabin for hours while ordinary people would be kept waiting outside for hours,’’ said a senior citizen of Madhurawada, whose land was grabbed by an anti-social element.

Meanwhile, the police came to know of the presence of accused Ganga Rao in Bangalore and dispatched a special team to arrest him.