The Crime Branch-CID has arrested one more suspect in the multicrore land scam in Theni district. The fraud reported two years ago involves some Revenue and Survey department officials who allegedly tampered with official records and transferred government poromboke lands to private individuals who sold them as housing plots to various buyers.
The investigating agency apprehended Eswaran, one of the accused, and remanded him in judicial custody. A few government officials and private persons have already been arrested in the case. The CB-CID investigation revealed how the accused officials systematically tampered with ‘Tamil Nilam’ software to create fake records, transferred the ownership to private persons and issued pattas.
Sources in the CB-CID said the poromboke lands worth several crores of rupees located in prime locations in and around Theni were retrieved and restored to the possession of the government after the pattas obtained through fraudulent means were cancelled, thanks to the intervention of C.A. Rishab, the then Sub-Collector of Periyakulam.
During a routine public grievance meeting in December 2021, Mr. Rishab received a petition from some villagers who alleged that a government land meant for construction of a school was encroached upon by some private persons who even managed to get patta in their names.
When preliminary inquiries revealed a fraud leading to usurping of poromboke lands, the Sub-Collector ordered a detailed probe to check whether the same modus operandi was adopted in other places also to defraud the government.
After the investigation exposed large-scale misappropriation of government lands, Mr. Rishab lodged a complaint with the police. The case was later transferred to the CB-CID. The initial probe report accused two Revenue Divisional Officers, two Tahsildars, one Surveyor and others of grabbing government lands.
Investigators found that the accused colluded with private persons who not only got poromboke lands transferred to their names but also obtained approval to convert the lands into housing plots and sold them to buyers, the sources said.
Asked how the land transfer happened, the sources said the accused officials created fake records as if lands were being allotted under government schemes. In some cases, documents were issued as if the lands were owned by the parents or ancestors of the beneficiaries and fake legal heir certificates fabricated to enable transfer of ownership.
