Days after the Cyberabad police unearthed a massive land scam in Hyderabad involving the illegal transfer of 796 acres of government land to private individuals by a sub-registrar, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials conducted several raids on Wednesday.
The raids and searches were conducted at offices of the Stamps and Registration (S&R) Department across Telangana.
This came a day after Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao took note of the massive scam, and asked the ACB to "conduct raids on 141 registration offices across the state," adding that they should "seize the documents which are not uploaded online.”
The Hindu reported that no arrests were made after the raids, but some officers were likely to face action for alleged malpractices that surfaced during the searches.
The Chief Minister's Office also said that one in five land deals in Telangana, were 'benami', thereby causing a loss to the state exchequer.
"The government got information that all the Benami transactions are not being uploaded by the officials in collusion with those registering the documents. The government came to know that there are about 20 percent of such registrations," a statement said.
On Monday, Cyberabad police arrested sub-registrar R Srinivasa Rao, along with PS Parthasarathi and PVS Sharma, directors of two firms.
On Tuesday, the Telangana government ordered an inquiry by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
It also issued transfer orders to 29 sub-registrars and joint registrars from the Stamps and Registration Department.
The CM also scrapped the ‘anywhere registration of land’ scheme, which was a special project launched in undivided Andhra Pradesh in 2013.
According to the police, Srinivasa Rao aided the transfer of government land to the other two individuals, which resulted in a loss of over Rs 500 crore, to the state government.
The police also accused Srinivasa Rao of exploiting loopholes, and paying only Rs 65 lakh as stamp duty on the purchase of hundreds of acres of land.
While it was initially estimated that the land scam involved 693 acres, the police have increased that estimate to 796 acres.
The scam came to light after Medchal district registrar N Saidi Reddy registered a complaint at the Kukatpally police station.
In the complaint, he alleged that Parthasarathi executed four registration deeds in favour of Sharma, when a memo from 2007 showed that the land belonged to the state government.