Hyderabad: Cyber crime police has apprehended three persons involved in unauthorised mutation of property documents by entering details in GHMC database through fake ID and charging higher price to the unlawful owner for illegal favour.
The arrested are Bathala Polaiah, GHMC data entry operator and main accused in the case, M. Lakhan Singh, mediator and data entry operator who brings the parties to Polaiah, Khaja Qutubuddin, beneficiary, and an absconding associate, Jagadish.
Based on a complaint from Mohammed Abbas, the cyber crime police registered a case and started an investigation. Cops said the victim, Mohd Abbas, had sold 220 yards out of his 370 yards to his neighbour, Khaja Qutubudddin, in 2001. On Saturday, when he went to visit the office of the municipal authorities at Circle 10 in GHMC at Khairatabad for the payment of tax for the year 2017-18, he was shocked to find out that his neighbour Khaja Qutubuddin’s name was cited against his house in an unsold 150 square yard space. On enquiry, he learnt that his name has been deleted against the property and the name of his neighbour was inserted in the system.
This was done with criminal intention in collusion with a municipal clerk and outsourcing data entry operator Battula Polaiah and M. Lakhan Singh, to whom he paid a huge amount. Thus, Khaja Qutubuddin and others jointly altered and removed information of his mutation name in the computer and entered his neighbour's name for illegal benefits.
During the course of the investigation, cops and an analysis team from cyber crime police obtained the IP address involved in changing the name for transaction from Mohammed Abbas Ali to Sri Khaja Qutubuddin. “We further sent a notice to the concerned ISP and obtained the address of the mobile subscriber using the said IP and apprehended the entire gang involved in the cheating and impersonation,” said the deputy commissioner of police, detective department, Avinash Mohanty.
The deputy commissioner added that “B. Polaiah was working as data entry operator at GHMC for mutations of property registered in the name of purch-asers. His duties were mutation of properties, valuation, exemptions, assessment, deletions etc. as per instructions of the chief valuation officer using the official user ID.
He earlier made some fake entries of mutation of properties and hence had been transferred to the fire prevention wing of the GHMC. Later, he met the absconding accused, Jagadish, an IT programmer of GHMC, and colluded with him. Both of them enabled some defunct user IDs and started changing ownership details of properties and provided IDs to the unauthorised mutator without verifying the official statement provided by the deputy commissioner's office.
Lakhan Singh and others used to bring the parties without going through proper channel and charge them exorbitantly for such unauthorised purchasers. In this manner, they have changed about 2,000 mutation names without verification and listing in the deputy commissioner's office of the GHMC and earned several lakhs of rupees, fraudulently causing irreparable loss and inconvenience to the genuine owners.
“The beneficiary approaching the con men for changing his name unauthorisedly is also apprehended in this case,” it was stated. Hyderabad police warns the general public not to fall prey to such con men.
