Hyderabad: The Vanasthalipuram police arrested a gang of 10 people who had attempted to grab a parcel of land worth Rs 40 crore by creating fake documents. The gang had installed a Ganesh idol on the land on Thursday to show that they owned the property. At 2 am on Thursday, the Vanasthalipuram police received an alert that a group had demolished the compound wall of an open land at Survey no 281 in Uday Sai Nagar Colony and had installed a Ganesh idol.
On reaching the spot, the police found that the gang had assaulted watchman Ravinder. The land owner, Ms Vemuri Nagalatha, 39, of Vijayawada, got to know of the incident and lodged a complaint with the Vanasthalipuram police.
“The JCB used to demolish the compound wall was seized and a woman, Kotagiri Usha Rani 37, forum president of Telangana Jana Jagruthi, was taken into custody for questioning,” said Vanasthalipuram inspector P. Narender.
Usha Rani, along with her daughter K. Thanmai, son-in-law M. Sampath Kumar, retired teacher N. Kumara Swamy, and others, including K. Sarath Chandra, K. Mallesh and N. Mahesh had hatched the plan to grab the 4,000-sq yard plot. The gang found that the land was purchased by one M. Venkateshwar Rao in 1994 from various people. They identified the children of one of the sellers Syed Siraj, Syed Ghouse, and Syed Samad Anwar and lured them with money to create a fake document giving the land to Usha Rani.
They then approached document writer Syed Toufeeq at the Begumpet sub-registrar office and Mohammed Sohel Ahmed, junior assistant at Marredpally sub-registrar office, and created a fake document of GPA dated to 2004, in the name of Usha Rani. “They paid Rs 12.5 lakh towards registration of the sale deed and a penalty,” said the inspector.
Usha Rani purported to execute a gift deed in the names of her daughter Thanmai and son-in-law. They decided to instal a Ganesh idol in the land so that they could spread word that the land belonged to them. “The registration would have been legal if they had executed the gift deeds. They used the employees at sub-registrar office to ensure that the registrations do not stop due to the illegal documents,” said the inspector. Except for Siraj and Ghouse, all the others were arrested.
