Ex-Revenue official held for faking papers

BHUBANESWAR: As land scams abound, the Crime Branch (CB) on Monday laid its hands on a retired Oath Commissioner of Board of Revenue who had allegedly helped forge an official document leading to sale of a patch of land in Jajpur’s Sukinda  tehsil.Nikunja Kishore Mohanty, the former Board of Revenue official, was arrested by a Crime Branch team and produced before the Judicial Magistrate First Class at Jajpur Road.Earlier, SS Patnaik, the main accused, who had got the land mutated in his name with the help of Mohanty and was trying to dispose it of, had been arrested.The Crime Branch found interesting operational insights into land bungling in this part of the State. Mohanty’s complicity in the case came to the fore after the investigating agency interrogated Patnaik and found that the former had signed on a fake judgment copy which was later sent to the Tehsildar for mutation process.The CB sources said, both Patnaik and Mohanty took advantage of hundreds of revision petitions filed before the Board of Revenue. Taking help of the officials, Patnaik prepared a document with a case number which CB describes as “borrowed.”“Every petition is assigned a case number and Patnaik borrowed a number to make it look genuine. Using the number, he prepared a judgment for the land in question with the verdict in his favour. Actually, no such case existed,” said Crime Branch sources.Using the fake document, he got Mohanty to sign the covering letter which was produced before the Tehsildar in Sukinda. Basing on it, Patnaik applied for mutation of the land and even got it done. When the original parties in the case came to know, a legal battle broke out and the Board of Revenue lodged a case. The Crime Branch took over the investigation in 2007.“While Patnaik tampered with a judicial document, Mohanty’s complicity was evident since he was party to the process,” CB officials said. The Crime Branch said, chargesheet in the case will be submitted soon.