EOW books ex-IAS officer for fraud in land deal

BHOPAL: The Economic Offences Wing (EOW) on Tuesday registered a case of criminal conspiracy and corruption against a retired IAS officer and four others in a strange case of land swapping.
A man bought a plot for less than Rs 2 lakh in a rural area in Katni district. Three months later, he approached the district administration with an application requesting exchange of his land for a premium and larger plot belonging to the state government.The SDM, naib tehsildar and Patwari allegedly prepared a report justifying the application. They submitted the report to Katni district collector, who allegedly passed the file without making inquiries. Thus, a plot in a remote inaccessible village was swapped for a premium large plot beside a national highway.
The land exchange was registered in 2008 in favour of a man identified as Mohammad Abbas, resident of Bari Omati in Jabalpur. The EOW registered the case under Section 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC and various Sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 against former district collector of Katni and retired IAS officer Anju Singh Baghel, the then SDM of Bahoriband area Jeetendra Singh Chouhan, naib tehsildar Chandrasekhar Mishra, patwari Rangdev and the beneficiary, Mohammad Abbas.
A complaint was received by the EOW about an illegal land swap by the Katni administration causing tremendous loss to the state exchequer.
An inquiry was conducted into the complaint and the facts were found to be correct. Based on that inquiry report, the EOW registered the corruption case.
Mohammad Abbas purchased the plot on November 20, 2007, for Rs 1,94,550 in the Barohiband tehsil of Katni district. In February 2008, he approached the office of the then SDM, Jeetendra Singh Chouhan, with an application asking for the allotment of a 78-hectare premium plot of government land at Hardua, beside the Kanyakumari-Varanasi National Highway 7.
The EOW probe report claimed that the SDM together with the naib tehsildar, Patwari and Abbas conspired and produced a report quoting certain portions of the Madhya Pradesh Panchayat Raj and Gram Swaraj Act 1993. The report was presented before the district collector who, on November 14, 2008, authorized the transfer of land after payment of an interim deposit of Rs 1,58,000.
According to the state revenue department, there is a rule whereby such agricultural land exchange is permissible but the value of each of the swapped plots has to be the same. However, in this case the plot allotted to Abbas was 25 times more valuable making an instant huge profit margin for the beneficiary. The EOW report claimed that the district administration and revenue officers had misused their office to provide financial gain to applicant Abbas.