Panchayat officials helped grab land worth Rs 5 crore: DVAC

The accused are C Krishnamoorthy (60), former commissioner of Kattankulathur panchayat, M Santhappan (63), retired block development officer of the same panchayat union, Kavitharani (46), former sub registrar of Guduvancherry, who is now working as sub -registrar in Villvakkam sub registry, V Ambrose (60), retired VAO of Urapkkam village and R Kamalakannan (64), a private individual from Perungalathur.

The land measuring about 1.92 acre was gifted by the housing welfare society for public utility by a gift deed in the year 1985. While the panchayat union had given an acknowledgement for the same, it did not receive the said deed. The housing welfare society had then purchased 94.6 acres land in Adambakkam village and Ayyancheri in Urapakkam panchayat.

The layout named Madurai Meenkashipuram, consisted of 996 residential plots, school, community hall, post office sites and public utility sites, such as parks and children’s playground.

The society had sold 960 plots during 1985-86 by registered sale deeds through its president N Doraivelu.

In the year 1986, the 94.6 acres was surveyed and new survey numbers were assigned to the purchasers along with individuals pattas. For unsold residential plots, commercial sites and the areas for public purpose were assigned in the society’s patta number 176 as the public utility area was not transferred in the name of the local body in the revenue records.

According to DVAC, the private individual Kamalakannan created false documents for the 1.92 acres land gifted to the local body by creating an unregistered sales deed dated February 3, 1958 to show it was purchased by one Jeyalakshmi, his grandmother.

He then made a fake document to show that the land was given to him by his mother (Jeyalakshmi’s daughter) in the year 2010. During examination, it was found that the settlement deed was registered without valid parent documents in the year 2010 with the help of the officials, who were cited as accused.