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Land scam: 17 get notices

BHUBANESWAR: The crime branch of State police served notices to 17 persons, some of them are believed to be very influential, to appear before it for interrogation in multi-hundred crore rupee land scam.

The land patches, which were fraudulently taken away by private individuals on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar, would have market value of more than Rs. 1500 crores.

“We have 23 people on our radar, but notices were served to 17 persons,” Inspector General of Crime Branch Bijay Sharma said here on Wednesday.

The crime branch was now in process of collecting incriminating documents pertaining to the land scam.

On Wednesday, son and daughter-in-law of Advocate-General of the State moved Orissa High Court seeking anticipatory bail after they were served crime branch notice.

Office of Advocate-General was earlier dragged into controversy in the case of private individuals fraudulently taking away government lands.

Nitin Chandra, then Special Secretary to General Administration, mentioned about missing of case files in advocate -general’s office.

Mr. Chandra along with G.V.V Sharma, Secretary to Revenue Department, appeared to be upset over Orissa High Court’s adverse order on 80 acres of valuable government land in Shyampur Mouza. Two persons -- Gunduchi Bijay Barik and Sachi Mahapatra -- had staked claim over 62.530 acre and 17.470 acre of land respectively.

Two senior bureaucrats had written two separate letters to the office of Advocate-General pointing failure of government machinery.

“The unique point is that valuable government land of about 80 acres has been ordered in favour of private parties without giving opportunity to government to state our position," Mr. Sharma said in the letter.

With land value skyrocketing, influential persons have reportedly managed to record acres of valuable government land in their favour in the capital city.

Several top officials in revenue department were said to have been involved in the land scam.

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