India: Another Telangana official caught taking huge bribe

Hyderabad: As the Telangana state government tries to rid its revenue department of rampant corruption, another senior official has been caught demanding and accepting a hefty bribe of Rs 11.2 million.

The Anti Corruption Bureau caught the additional collector of Medak district Gaddam Nagesh and four other officials of the revenue department when they were accepting the bribe.

According to the ACB officials, Naresh, along with three other subordinates demanded the bribe for issuing a no objection certificate for the registration of 112 acres of land in Narsapur mandal in the name of buyers. He wanted a bribe of Rs 4 million in cash and five acres of land in the name of another person.

Others who were nabbed in connection of the bribery scandal include Narsapur Revenue Divisional Officer B Aruna Reddy, Tehsildar Abdul Sattar, Junior Assistant Waseem Ahmed and Jeevan Kumar, in whose name the additional collector wanted the land to be registered.

During the search, the ACB teams also recovered Rs 2.8 million in cash and hald a kg gold from the house of Aruna Reddy.

The ACB raided 12 places belonging to the additional collector and other officials after they received a complaint from one person K Linga Reddy that the revenue department officials were demanding Rs 11.2 million bribe for registering the land he along with four others had purchased in Chipalturthi village of Medak district. The land in fact belonged to the state government and its sale was prohibited.

This is second such massive bribery case to come to the light in Telangana revenue department in less than a month. On August 15 the ACB had caught Tehsildar of Keesara in Medchal district E Balaraju Nagaraju with stash of currency notes of Rs 12.5 million for resolving the dispute over a piece of land.

The latest case came just when the Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao was going to present two new legislations in the state assembly to put an end to corrupt practices and irregularities in the revenue department and streamline the process of registration of lines and properties.

As part of the process of setting the revenue department in order, the state government decided to abolish the 6,485 posts of Village Revenue Officers and 20,000 village revenue assistants and shift them to other departments and curtail the powers of the revenue officials like Tehsildars and Revenue Divisional officers in matter of land registration. The new bills provide for making the entire land record and the process of registration digitized and free of human interface to end the scope for corruption and bribes. The bills also provide for the termination of services of Tehsildar who issue wrong pass books or land ownership papers in rural areas.