9 patwaris booked for Rs 1.62-cr scam in Bhawanigarh

Tribune News Service

Sangrur, September 30

The police have reigstered FIR against nine patwaris (revenue officers) and a private bank’s development officer for sanctioning loan amounting to Rs 1.62 crore to fake land owners by tampering fard records. Of the total sanctioned loan, the accused managed to get Rs 1.17 crore released.

Fake land owners

• A private bank officer with the help of patwaris tampered with records of Fard Sanjh Kendra, Bhawanigarh, to prepare Kisan Credit Card loan files
• He sanctioned Rs 1.62 crore to various persons by forging the land documents of orginal owners

In his complaint to the police, bank’s Bhawanigarh branch manager Rahul Bansal alleged his development officer Gurinder Singh tampered with the land records of various farmers from 2015 to 2017 and sanctioned Kisan Credit Card ( KCC) loans to fake persons. “We started through investigations and it turned out to be a big scam”, said SSP Swapan Sharma.

The SSP said during probe it came to light that Gurinder colluded with patwari Manjit Singh and sanctioned a loan of Rs 13,17,600 to one Simrandeep Singh against the land of Nahar Singh. Another patwari, Darshan Singh, sanctioned Rs 10,84,000 to fake owner Ajaib Singh. Similarly, other patwaris, including Karamjit Singh, Darshan Singh and Roop Singh, colluded with the bank officer to help him sanction loans to fake land owners.