Bogus registrations from years ago used in land fraud in Telangana

Hyderabad: Officials are continuing raids on sub-registrar offices across the state and are coming across property registration documents that were registered over five to 10 years ago.

These documents should have been with property buyers a week after the registration but they have been lying in sub-registrar offices for years, exposing serious irregularities. Some original documents have been recovered from shops run by private document writers.

The raids are being carried out by ACB and CID teams on 140 sub-registrar offices and shops run by document writers located near sub-registrar offices.

As per norms, these registration documents have to be scanned and uploaded on the revenue records website soon after registration. But they have been neither scanned nor uploaded. Officials in sub-registrar offices had no answer when inspection teams questioned them on why registration documents were lying there for years indicating that those registrations were bogus. Officials suspect that it was done to help land grabbers take over government lands and transfer them later. Inspection teams have been updating the finding of raids to CMO and revenue officials daily.

On Saturday, Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao held a meeting at Pragathi Bhavan to take stock of the situation. Mr Rao directed officials to continue the raids. He is also learnt to have okayed raids on houses of sub-registrars and other staff to unearth the scams. He has also asked the revenue department to update the documents and upload them thereby giving no scope for any irregularities in the future.