Bhu Bharati E-Challan Scam: Rs 52 Cr Loss to State Treasury

Hyderabad: The revenue department has pegged the preliminary loss to the state exchequer at Rs.52 crore in the Bhu Bharati e-challan land registration scam, official sources said.

According to a report submitted to the government, the department stated that fraudulent transactions were largely concentrated in Yadadri Bhuvanagiri, Rangareddy and Jangaon districts.

The scam came to light after irregularities were detected in agricultural land registrations processed through private online service centres, where registration charges and stamp duties collected from farmers were allegedly diverted before reaching the government treasury.

The report learnt to have revealed that the accused exploited technical vulnerabilities in the payment gateway by using sophisticated software tools, including Burp Suite, to manipulate the challan generation process.

By intercepting and editing payment data, they showed full payment on the registration portal while remitting only a fraction of the amount to the bank. A complaint lodged by a tahsildar in Jangaon, following the detection of anomalies in a transaction processed through a private internet centre, triggered a police case and a wider probe.

Official sources said around 4,800 transactions are suspected to have been tampered with, resulting in an estimated loss of Rs.52 crore to the government. Preliminary scrutiny suggests that in several cases, while farmers paid the entire amount in cash to service centre operators, only one to two per cent of the actual fee was transferred to the government account.

In one illustrative instance, a farmer paid Rs.1.26 lakh towards stamp duty, transfer duty and other charges, but records showed that only Rs.1,261 had been credited to the SBI e-pay gateway, allowing the culprits to siphon off more than Rs.1.24 lakh from a single deed.

The scam is believed to have operated through a systematic method. Farmers typically pay registration charges in cash at online centres, whose operators deposit the money into their own accounts and complete the transaction using debit cards.

The accused allegedly altered payment values in the portal, generating challans that reflected full payment on the deed while showing a drastically reduced amount in the actual bank transaction. Sources said the operators shared commissions from the diverted funds and allegedly paid bribes to ensure that discrepancies did not surface during verification.

A key accused from Yadagirigutta, identified as Basavaraj, is suspected to have misappropriated nearly `11 crore with the help of another associate. The money was reportedly spent on luxury vehicles and on multiple foreign trips, including visits to Thailand. More than 1,200 registration-related documents were allegedly recovered from his possession. Officials believe that the racket was not confined to Jangaon alone and that similar practices were prevalent across several districts.

The National Informatics Centre (NIC), which now manages the Bhu Bharati portal, has begun a forensic audit of e-files from internet centres with a high volume of registrations. Lists of suspicious transactions, categorised by service centre IDs, have been forwarded to district authorities.

In Yadadri Bhuvanagiri district alone, 1,367 registrations were found to be highly irregular, with some documents showing payments as low as Rs.1, Rs.40 or Rs.90 against fees running into lakhs. Sources said that against an expected revenue of nearly Rs.5.49 crore, only about Rs.57 lakh was credited to the treasury, indicating massive diversion of funds.

The government has constituted a high-level committee comprising officials from the revenue department, police, stamps and registrations, NIC and financial experts to identify those responsible, quantify the exact loss and recommend recovery measures.

The committee is also examining whether similar manipulations occurred earlier under the previous Dharani portal, suggesting that the malpractice may have continued for several years.

Probe is on to detect the role of tahsildars and joint sub-registrars, who are required to verify whether the challan amount generated in the system matches the sum actually credited to the government account. Despite the fact that payment details are printed clearly on deeds, including the SBI e-pay amount, registrations were approved and documents were signed and sealed by officials. Officials are probing whether this failure was due to negligence or collusion.

The issuance of notices to Jangaon farmers asking them to pay the balance amount has sparked controversy. Farmers argue that they had already paid the full charges in cash to service centres and that the responsibility for recovery should lie with those who siphoned off the funds. The government is now exploring legal options to recover the misappropriated money from the accused and to block or cancel licences of errant service centres.

Police have taken some Internet centre operators into custody and further arrests are expected. District collectors are personally monitoring the scrutiny of suspicious registrations, while cyber crime experts, CCS police and NIC officials are analysing digital trails. Sources said the focus is not only on fixing accountability but also on strengthening the software of Bhu Bharati to prevent manipulation of payment gateways and restore public confidence in the land registration system.