There is unmistakable pleasure on Anumandla Ravinder’s face when he tells his buddies and relations about his lifelong dream lastly taking form on a 140-square yard plot: constructing a home for his household. A resident of Theegalaguttapally, on the outskirts of Karimnagar metropolis in northern Telangana, about 160 kilometres from Hyderabad, the 49-year-old, along with his modest stature and manner, embodies the quintessential traits of a middle-class household man. With the concrete slab lately laid for the home, his pleasure is obvious. But his eyes properly up as he displays on the journey that led him right here.
Mistaken for tears of pleasure, they conceal his ache as he recollects the solitary battle he fought in opposition to a robust land-grabbing gang led by a neighborhood politician. Starting off as a supervisor at a bar almost three many years in the past, he climbed his approach as much as the place of supervisor.
With his modest financial savings, Ravinder, a Dalit, bought an open plot on the town outskirts in 2014. Over the following couple of years, he constructed a basement on the plot with contributions from his close to and expensive ones. All appeared properly till a name in May 2022 shattered his goals: a neighbor reported unauthorised digging on his plot to put pillar foundations.
Scared, Ravinder rushed to the location, and noticed 15 folks led by a pacesetter of the then ruling occasion attempting to erect a construction on his plot. “That was the beginning of my nightmare, and I was compelled to seek the help of police,” he recollects, preventing again tears.
A police workforce arrived on the spot and requested the 2 events to go to the police station. Ravinder went with the plot paperwork however the different occasion represented by one Vijender (identify modified), henchman of the native chief, didn’t flip up.
After hours of ready, Ravinder returned to the location the following morning, solely to discover a whitewashed compound wall and two tin-shed rooms on his plot. A bunch of strangers had been contained in the ‘overnight-raised house’ and denied Ravinder entry. “There were more surprises. Three others, armed with forged documents, claimed rights to the plot,” says Ravinder, including that these folks had filed a number of cases in opposition to him over the now ‘disputed’ land. Police certain him over, cautioning him in opposition to coming into the plot with no court docket order.
He says he then approached the then minister Gangula Kamalakar, who summoned the native chief and reprimanded him for grabbing the property. Ravinder managed to safe constructing permission, laid a borewell and raised pillars to construct his home, having put in surveillance cameras.
However, simply when he believed issues had been wanting up, he confronted one other setback about 10 months in the past. This time, a gaggle of almost 10 folks, wielding huge hammers, stormed the location on the night time of January 10 this 12 months and went on a rampage, demolishing the pillars.
Ravinder sank into despair till a buddy suggested him to hunt assist from the brand new Police Commissioner of Karimnagar, Abhishek Mohanty. “I went to visit him the very next day. The Commissioner was not present but his staff heard me out and assured to act upon my complaint,” he shares.
Within 48 hours, a workforce led by Assistant Commissioner of Police (Economic Offences Wing)-Karimnagar, Madhavi landed up on the website, performed inquiries and verified his paperwork. Within per week, the scenario took a optimistic flip because the police registered a legal case based mostly on Ravinder’s criticism, resulting in the arrest of a Karimnagar resident, Thota Sripathi Rao, and others concerned.
Complaints galore
This shouldn’t be a stray incident. Over the previous three months, 22 legal cases have been filed with Karimnagar police, with many extra complaints underneath investigation. Three corporators of the Karimnagar Municipal Corporation (KMC), spouses of 4 corporators, a Zilla Parishad Territorial Constituency member, a former Mandal Parishad Territorial Constituency member, and a Mandal Revenue Officer have been arrested and despatched to judicial custody. Even a district-level sports activities physique president, a detailed affiliate of Kamalakar, was arrested. While a majority of them have been launched on bail, a couple of are nonetheless behind bars.
Since 2020, the police have been receiving comparable complaints from varied components of the town, notably from villages surrounding it.
Retired Singareni worker Kotha Raji Reddy along with his spouse Sujatha at their under-construction home at Bhagathnagar in Karimnagar.
| Photo Credit:
Marri Ramu
Nearly 13 gram panchayats on the town periphery have been merged with the KMC in current years. These areas have extra open lands. Some villages like Rekurthi right here have large tracts of presidency lands. With the true property increase, costs of land skyrocketed. A decade in the past, a middle-class household wouldn’t have favoured proudly owning a flat, however the tradition of residences has unfold to each nook of the town as area shrinks.
An IPS officer of 2011 batch, Mohanty was posted as Karimnagar Police Commissioner in October 2023 forward of the Telangana State Assembly elections in December. Even whereas dealing with election work, he made certain he was accessible to the folks. He seen {that a} appreciable variety of complaints had been about land-grabbing, chit fund operators and monetary disputes. Upon reviewing some cases, the police realised that making certain justice for the victims would require thorough evaluation, ascertaining details, and figuring out authorized complexities. To handle this, he arrange a separate Economic Offences Wing with a specialised workforce of officers.
“The Commissioner’s first step was to ascertain authenticity of the complaint. That required calling for records from both parties, studying them and then going for prosecution with the police station concerned,” explains ACP Madhavi.
Discrepancies in Dharani
But it was simpler mentioned than carried out. Some cases had been extraordinarily complicated, making it tough to establish the culprits and comprehend their modus operandi. For occasion, engineering graduate B. Raghu, a resident of Seetharampur in Karimnagar, approached the police, alleging that 4 guntas of his father’s land had been mutated in the names of his aunts and uncle with out his data by way of the State’s Dharani portal, a web-based platform for land information.
“Normally, police would have dismissed it as a civil dispute and asked us to move court. But I insisted on a thorough probe,” Raghu recollects.
Investigators discovered that the mutation of the land papers was initiated utilizing the login credentials of Village Revenue Assistant Jeevan Goud, an worker of Karimnagar mandal income workplace. Surprisingly, as a substitute of registration paperwork and encumbrance certificates, particulars of the revenue tax returns of Goud’s relative and the curriculum vitae of an unidentified particular person had been uploaded. How this mutation was accepted raised questions concerning the reliability of the portal.
Approval for mutations on Dharani portal requires the Collector’s digital thumbprint. Two outsourced staff and a contract technician help the Collector in this course of. It is suspected that these individuals might have misled the Collector by referencing unrelated information. Investigators plan to interview the previous Collector in this case.
Mandal Revenue Officer (MRO) Chilla Srinivas, who held full extra cost on the income workplace, emerged because the mastermind. Police arrested Chanda Santosh of Ramagundam, a good worth store supplier, because the property was mutated in his identify. He confessed to being a benami for Srinivas, whom he knew from the time the latter served as a Revenue Inspector in Ramagundam.
The MRO initially claimed innocence however when confronted with proof of his telephone conversations with Santosh, he was left speechless. Investigators are nonetheless probing potential connections between the outsourced staff helping the Collector and the MRO.
Srinivas, now suspended and launched on bail after being arrested in Raghu’s case, faces one other critical cost involving one other MRO, Jinka Jayanth. Srinivas was arrested in the primary case whereas serving as Gajwel MRO in Siddipet district, whereas Jayanth, the complainant in the second case, is MRO of Akbarpet-Bompally in the identical district.
Jayanth owns ancestral land of 11.08 acres underneath survey no. 94 in Kisannagar of Karimnagar metropolis. One Sunchu Rajaiah additionally owned 2.32 acres underneath the identical survey quantity, which he bought to a person named Laxmaiah in 1954 earlier than his loss of life.
Madhavi says Srinivas, together with MRO Muzamil Ahmed and Village Revenue Officer Vishnuvardhan Raj, schemed to amass a part of this land.
They ready virasat (a time period used for mutation of land attributable to loss of life of land proprietor or on will) orders for two.32 acres in favour of Rajaiah’s household, intending to make use of the cast paperwork to assert Jayanth’s ancestral land in Kisannagar.
Investigators found that earlier than issuing the virasat orders, the group registered three plots of 726, 484, and 1,089 sq. yards in the names of three individuals – Srinivas’ mother-in-law, brother of one other MRO Ahmed and spouse of VRO Vishnuvardhan Raj’s buddy, Madhavi explains. Karimnagar Three Town police registered a legal case based mostly on Jayanth’s criticism. While the probe continues to be underneath approach, Jayanth’s sibling has approached the Vigilance and Enforcement (V&E) division for an inquiry.
The division faulted the accused Revenue officers in a report, recommending motion in opposition to them underneath the Prevention of Corruption Act. However, motion based mostly on the V&E report is but to be initiated.
Hope on the horizon
Similar to bar supervisor Ravinder’s case, sexagenarian Kotha Raji Reddy is overjoyed after efficiently thwarting a number of makes an attempt over two years to illegally occupy his open plot positioned close to the district collectorate constructing. A retired welder of Singareni Collieries Company Limited, Reddy’s struggle for justice earned him widespread recognition in the town.
In 1999, Reddy bought an open plot of 267 sq. yard in Bhagathnagar. To stop encroachment, he obtained permission to construct a single-storey home. He constructed a compound wall and a two-room home with a tin shed with the home quantity 8-3-238/4/1 in 2006. Upon retiring in 2020, he rented a two-room portion close to the location to hold out development. On being requested by authorities to reapply for permission, he did so and was granted approval to assemble a home of floor plus two flooring.
“I got this second approval on July 27, 2021, and went ahead with the digging to lay pillars. However, a few days later, local corporator Thota Ramulu and another leader Cheeti Rama Rao, along with their henchmen, barged into the house and asked me to stop construction work,” he alleges.
Reddy maintains that the corporator mentioned the plot was bought by Rama Rao however they didn’t have any legitimate paperwork.
He repeatedly turned up on the weekly Prajavaani, a programme the place residents air their grievances straight with the district authorities for redressal, and highlighted the makes an attempt to illegally seize his plot utilizing cast paperwork. When his petitions to the police didn’t elicit any response, he approached the High Court, which ordered a survey and inspection of the plot. Notices had been issued to him and the opposite particular person claiming rights to the land.
The survey report that got here out on the finish of 2022 was in his favour. “I thought with the report through the High Court order, no one could stop the construction of my house,” Reddy recollects. However, all through 2023, his opponents hindered development by deploying municipal employees and police. Seeking aid, he attended the Praja Darbar organised by the brand new Congress authorities on December 8, 2023, the place he detailed his ordeal.
After receiving an utility ID, he met the Karimnagar police commissioner in the second week of January. “The Commissioner listened attentively. The next day, a team of police officials visited my house site,” Reddy recollects. After thorough verification of paperwork, they permitted him to proceed with development as he had all papers in place.
People who’ve gone by way of extended ordeals and fought authorized battles, at the moment are a relieved lot. Yet, their experiences increase questions on how the identical law enforcement officials who initially couldn’t help them turned saviours. A police officer, requesting anonymity, says that an inquiry was initiated in opposition to 4 officers who allegedly did not observe process and exhibited bias.
“Police officers failing to thoroughly examine a complaint by branding it a civil dispute is detrimental to the interests of law-abiding citizens,” says HC advocate Uma Shankar.