Tampering of land records has been a matter of concern in the Keonjhar tehsil office, where several cases of fraud involving revenue officials have been detected during the last one year.
last month, two revenue staff members were arrested and court forwarded for illegal tampering of records and sale of valuable land in the Keonjhar town area. In spite of strict laws preventing transfer of land belonging to Scheduled Tribes, officials in the tehsil in nexus with land mafia are allegedly transferring ST land in favour of nontribal citizens.
According to sources, Rohit Naik, a tribal resident of Ranibeda village, Telkoi block, had purchased a piece of land at Ranki village near Keonjhar town in 2014. He had converted the land to homestead after he was granted patta by the Tehsildar, Keonjhar. A few days back, he was surprised to find that his piece of purchased land under khata 447/1023 had already been sold to one Sanjay Patwari without his knowledge. Even purchaser Sanjay Patwari managed to obtain patta on the land in 2015 after due mutation verification conducted by Purusottam Kuanr, the Sadar Revenue Inspector.
Shocked and unable to understand how his land had been sold and transferred to another person without his knowledge or consent, Naik filed a complaint before the Tehsildar regarding the illegal deal. But to his surprise, tehsildar Subash Chandra Ray issued a show cause notice blaming the tribal victim for the whole affair. In his show cause notice no 47/2016, the tehsildar admitted that Naik had purchased five decimal of land by registered sale deed and was the recorded tenant of the land in 2014. After a year mysteriously the plot of land was transferred illegally to one Upendra Mohanty without any sale deed or valid mutation case tampering computerized records. Subsequently, Upendra Mohanty sold the land to Sanjay Patwari who got the land mutated in his name.
But suspicion arises as to how the land belonging to a tribal could be tampered and mutated without involvement of the revenue authorities.
It is ridiculous that Naik has been asked to explain why his land was transferred to a non tribal.
“The tehsildar has tried to point at my fault to escape from the illegal affair now detected in his office,” lamented Naik. It is also alleged that such illegal sale deed was executed while Subash Ray, Keonjhar Tehsildar, was on joint charge of Sub-Registrar, Keonjhar.
When contacted, Additional District Magistrate Sangram Kesari Swain, promised to make an impartial inquiry into the matter and take action against the culprits. Besides this case, many other instances in land scam under the Keonjhar tehsil has surfaced during the tenure of Ray and a high level inquiry has been demanded to unearth the multi-crore land scam.