Siblings held for land fraud

BHUBANESWAR: The Crime Branch (CB) of Odisha Police on Friday arrested two brothers in connection with a land fraud which had taken place six years ago here.The siblings __ Suresh Chandra Patnaik and Arun Kanti Patnaik __ were produced in the Sub Divisional Judicial Magistrate (SDJM) later in the day.The duo were involved in taking possession of a piece of land in Chandrasekharpur area and selling it off to another person.Suresh had allegedly impersonated as another person by the same name and taken over the land without the knowledge of the original owner. When the matter came to the General Administration (GA) Department, which had allotted the land, a case was lodged in Capital Police Station in 2005 and CB took over the investigation a year later.According to the case records, the 2,700 sq ft plot in question belonged to one Suresh Patnaik, an employee with the Orissa Cashew Development Corporation. The land was allotted to Patnaik in 1991. The accused had come to know about the plot and allegedly hatched a conspiracy. One of them filed a petition before the executive magistrate posing as Suresh Patnaik (the original owner) and submitted that he had lost all documents of the land.Later, using the documents issued from the executive magistrate’s office, Suresh went to GA Department and posing as the original owner applied for freehold of the plot. He managed to get the final order on freehold of the land in 2004. He then sold off the plot to one Sitaram Sahu.When Sahu took possession of the plot and started erecting compound walls, the original owner Patnaik came to know about it and objected the move. He then learnt that his land had been sold off without his knowledge by an impersonator. He took up the matter with GA Department and the Director of Estates lodged an FIR in this connection.  The CB sources said chargesheet in the case will be finalised shortly. The current market rate of the plot is likely to be over Rs 40 lakh.