Hyderabad: Even as India celebrated 74th Independence Day on Saturday, the dream of a corruption-free country remains a distant one for the toiling masses.
In a reflection of how rampant corruption is in the country, sleuths of Telangana Anti Corruption Bureau caught a middle level officer of revenue department red handed while accepting a bribe of whopping Rs 12.5 million (Dh613,400) in Hyderabad.
A team of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) raided the Hyderabad residence of Erva Balraju Nagaraju, Mandal Revenue Officer of Keesara Tahsil in the city outskirts, when he was accepting wads of currency notes from the agents of a real estate agency. ACB also arrested three others, including village revenue officer Sairaj, and two agents, Srinadh and Anji Reddy.
According to the ACB officials the raid was carried out on a tip-off that the officer would be accepting the bribe money at his home on Saturday morning.
First installment
“Nagaraju had demanded the bribe of Rs20 million for settling a dispute over 28 acres of land in Rampalli Dayara village of Medchal-Malkajgiri district adjoining Hyderabad from Satya Developers,” a senior officer said. First installment of Rs 12.5 million was being handed over on Saturday.
A formal announcement of raid and arrests was expected later in the day as ACB was still conducting raids and searches at some other places belonging to Nagaraju. Deputy Superintendent ACB Suryanarayana said, “Searches are on. Apart from the cash and gold jewellery we have also recovered a bank locker key”.
When the MRO and other arrested persons, with a pile of seized bundles of currency notes, were produced before the media, Nagaraju tried to cover his face with anti-coronavirus glass shield but the ACB made him remove it and face the cameras.
The incident, especially the amount of money involved, was being seen as an indication of the increasing levels of corruption in government offices specially in the revenue department, which deals with the registration of lands and properties.
Earlier too the department, notorious for its corruption, witnessed many such cases but it is first time that such a big amount of cash was seized in a single instance.
The rampant corruption had come into sharp focus in the past when a lady MRO Lavanya was arrested and suspended in July 2019 when a raid by ACB found cash worth Rs9.3 million and 400gm of gold at her home. Lavanya, a winner of Best Officer’s award of the state government, faced the ACB action after many farmers complained that she and her staff were demanding bribes for updating their land ownership records. Subsequently her husband, a senior officer in Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation, was also arrested in another corruption case.
The happenings in the state revenue department, a cash cow, became a subject of raging debate when in November last year a person entered the office of MRO of Abdullahpurmet, on the city’s outskirts, and set the lady officer Vijaya on fire. She died on the spot. There were allegations that the man took the extreme step and later committed suicide, as he was frustrated over the delay in settling a dispute over his land.
