Visakhapatnam rural Tahsildar suspended for not reporting irregularities

After a land scam recently came to light and two people were arrested, the Visakhapatnam District Collector, Dr. Annam Mallikharjuna IAS, has suspended Visakhapatnam Rural Tahsildar, K Narasimha Murthy. 

Mr. Murthy has been suspended for not following the protocol and reporting irregularities to the higher officials. The suspension orders were issued by the office of the District Collector on Wednesday night in which Visakhapatnam Deputy Tahsildar, Kiran Kumar, was appointed as in-charge Tahsildar.

This land scam was unravelled after the city police on Monday arrested two persons who tried to sell 12.26 acres of land at Kommadi, belonging to an NRI, T Krishna Chowdhary, on the basis of forged documents. The land owner’s wife, Lakshmi Surya Prasanna, had reported the incident at the Tahsildar office and lodged a complaint at the PM Palem police station. The police got into action and nabbed two realtors for forging land documents while the third accused is yet to be arrested. After learning the value of the combined property, the two realtors had hatched a plan to prepare certified copies of the land and sell it off without the knowledge of the owner.

Surprisingly, the accused tried to sell the land to U Sukumara Varma, son of YSRCP MLA (Yelamanchili), Uppalapati Venkata Ramanamurthy Raju. It was found that a deal had been struck at Rs 18.7 crore. U Sukumara Varma had given an advance of Rs. 5 crores to the accused, for the land registration work at the Tahsildar office in Madhurawada. 

K Narasimha Murthy is said to have earned a good name for himself as the Rural Tahsildar of Visakhapatnam in the past two years. It was allegedly said that he actually followed the procedures when he suspected this land registration. He had allegedly informed the Registrar of Madhurawada Tahsildar’s office, and the District Registrar, about the fake land documents.