‘Main conspirators' of Rs 100 crore Bokaro land scam arrested in Jharkhand

Indian Express

17 hours ago

Jharkhand's Crime Investigation Department Saturday arrested two prime accused in an alleged Rs 100 crore Bokaro forest and revenue land scam that involved selling acres of government land using forged documents.
The suspects have been identified as Izhar Hussain and Akhtar Hussain, who have been accused of illegally selling 103 acres of forest and revenue land in Bokaro in 2012. They have been sent to judicial custody.
According to senior officials, this is the first time that the 'main conspirators' were arrested. 'Yes, they are the ones who allegedly created all the fake documents on the basis of which the land was supposed to be transferred to them,' Jharkhand DGP Anurag Gupta said confirming the arrests. 'This is quite an old issue, but for the first time, the people behind it have been arrested.'
According to the CID, the two suspects had made the land over to their names illegally in 2012, but the mutation was cancelled in 2016. In 2018, the Jharkhand High Court stayed the DC's cancellation order but directed the parties to approach a civil court for a title suit.
Meanwhile, Izhar and Akhtar 'fraudulently' got the land removed from the restricted land list, then the allegedly created a fake auction document dated 1933 and transferred the land's power of attorney to Patna businessman, who eventually 'sold' it to a company in which his wife is the director.
Investigations allegedly revealed that a fake 1933 auction document and No Objection Certificates (NOCs) were allegedly used in the transaction. According to officials, two companies were involved in the alleged deal and that the land changed hands days after the money was transferred to the seller's account.
An FIR was lodged in the case in 2024. Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate, which is also probing the alleged scam, conducted searches at 16 locations across Jharkhand and Bihar in April. Among the places raided were some government offices as well as the premises of one of the two companies.
The ED's 2022 probe had allegedly revealed that the forest land in Tetulia was wrongly recorded as barren land in 2013 and that fraudulent sales were executed based on that.
Shubham Tigga hails from Chhattisgarh and studied journalism at the Asian College of Journalism. He previously reported in Chhattisgarh on Indigenous issues and is deeply interested in covering socio-political, human rights, and environmental issues in mainland and NE India.
Presently based in Pune, he reports on civil aviation, other transport sectors, urban mobility, the gig economy, commercial matters, and workers' unions.
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