Hyderabad: Ramesh Chandra Reddy was let off with minor rebuke after scam

Hyderabad: According to top officials of the stamps and registration department, two officials were known to be involved in the South India Research Institute (SIRI) stamp duty evasion case, including former LB Nagar sub-registrar Ramesh Chandra Reddy.

A top official of the department said, “The department had earlier conducted an enquiry into the SIRI case, and a report with recommendations was submitted in December 2016. Two officials, Sadasivam and Ramesh Chandra Reddy were found to be involved. While Sadasivam retired without any punishment, Ramesh Chandra Reddy was given a departmental action of two increment cuts.”

The Ranga Reddy district registrar was asked to fix the market value under Section 47A, and recover the evaded stamp duty from SIRI under the Revenue Recovery Act. However, since then, in the past six months, there has been no action.

The accused officials connived with SIRI's management to pay less stamp duty. “The piece of land to be registered is adjacent to the highway. The rate is Rs 33,000 per square yard. But they broke the land into two pieces and paid Rs 10,000 per square yard for the broken piece of interior land. This caused huge loss to the department,” the official said.

The LB Nagar police booked two cases, one pertaining to the Siri land, in which Gokaraju Subba Raju, chairman and managing director of the company has already been arrested.

“The second case pertains to a housing society. It is based on a complaint lodged by one Sridhar Reddy against Naresh Choudary, Anil Kumar, Kishan and Padmaja Kishan,” said LB Nagar inspector P. Kasi Reddy.