Lekha G
The Crime Investigation Department (CID) filed a counter-affidavit in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh urging to lift the stay on the Amaravati land scam case filed by MLA Alla Ramakrishna Reddy against former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and former Minister for Municipal Administration P. Narayana.
In the counter-affidavit, CID DSP Lakshminarayana said that, “The Whole scam centered on a web of lies and deceit. A campaign was run over claims made by some political sections and government agencies that the assigned lands would be taken over by the government creating a sense of fear and panic in the assignees, most of them belonging to Dalit communities. The assigned lands were then bought at throw away prices and later submitted to a land pooling scheme”.
“In return, they were provided with developed plots after bringing in GO Ms No.41 in February 16 in violation of all existing rules. The issuance of the GO has caused massive loss to the State exchequer and in violation of business rules”.
The CID submitted that the GO had neither been passed by a prior approval of the Cabinet nor the Legislative Assembly according to the APCRDA Act.
The CID further contended that then Joint Collector, Guntur Dr. Sreedhar had issued oral instructions to the Tahsildars, Thullur to hand over all the RSR, FMB, Adangals, 1B original land records to the office of JC.
“The nature of the scam is so clear as the then JC had asked the Tahsildars to take possession of all revenue records and keep them in his room and later in 2016, the Office of the Collector wrote a letter seeking records.”
“It is evident that only Dr. Sreedhar (the then JC, Guntur) knew where the original land records were and he had not submitted the records neither to his successor nor to the Collector. The CID had already filed cases against Mr. Sudheer and Mr. Brahmananda Reddy and further investigations would bring all facts into light”, said the CID.
The CID further said that it had obtained the details of the land owners who had given lands in categories 4,5,6 from the CRDA to map the details on the ground. It was found that majority of the persons who had given lands under Category 4 belonged to the Telugu Desam Party and had tried in vain to register the lands in Sub-Registrar office at Mangalagiri.
It was contended that these persons had purchased lands from the assignees on registered sale agreements by paying nominal amounts, later had given the land to LPS and some of them even sold the developed plots at excessive rates.
The investigative agency also cited a judgment of Supreme Court that ruled out interference by courts in cases under Section 482 Cr.PC.
The whole conspiracy had come into light when the Office of the Collector, Guntur wrote to the Tahsildars of the three mandals of Thullur, Tadepalli and Mangalagiri saying that there were no revenue records available and asked to find out who were in possession of assigned lands through a field survey.