KASARAGOD: The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) arrested the village officer and the village assistant of Cheemeni village for taking a bribe of Rs 10,000 from the mother of an endosulfan survivor to help her get the title deed of a 50-cent plot in her family's possession for 70 years.
Village officer K V Santhosh (47) and village assistant KC Mahesh (45) were caught red-handed from Cheemeni village office Friday evening, said K V Venugopal, DySP of the Anti-Corruption Bureau.
The woman had to pawn her sacred marriage necklace (thali) to raise the money. But before going to the village office, she approached the VACB. "We trapped the officers by applying phenolphthalein powder on the notes given by the woman," he said.
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As soon as the woman left the village office, the VACB officers and two gazetted officers raided the office and recovered the powdered notes, which turned pink on being dipped in lime water.
The DySP said that the woman and before that her father and her grandmother had been going to the village office to get the plot regularised for years. "Her father died four months ago after wearing out his shoes and she took over the files," said Venugopal.
The woman's 13-year-old son is confined to bed because of endosulfan-related ailment, her elder daughter is an undergraduate student and her husband is a daily wage labourer.
But these realities did not stop the village officer from allegedly demanding Rs 1.5 lakh as a bribe to initiate the process to regularise the land. She negotiated and brought the bribe amount down to Rs 50,000.
But the agriculture officer of her village told her that she need not give the bribe and she was entitled to the land because her family had been using it for the past 70 years. The land also has many coconut and rubber trees.
According to the Kerala Land Assignment Act, land occupied before August 1971 and not considered objectionable is assigned to the occupier. The woman's grandmother owned this land since 1950 and they were paying taxes till 2019 when the Village Office stopped accepting taxes because it had gone digital.
All the village officer had to do was go to the property and prepare a report which should include the number and types of trees on it and for how long the property was in their possession. The tahsildar gives the ownership of the land based on the report. "Just to prepare a report, the village officer was demanding a bribe," said the DySP.
Nudged by the agriculture officer, the woman approached the VACB on November 3. "Before taking action, we did a preliminary study and found that the two officers were masters in researching and finding technical flaws to deny land to applicants," said the VACB officer. They would then cite these flaws to demand bribes from applicants.
Venugopal said he had been getting similar complaints from Padna, Kodom-Bellur, and Kayyur-Cheemeni panchayats. "But no one dares to come forward and help us lay a trap. But this woman did," he said.
Village officer K V Santhosh and village assistant K C Mahesh have been charged with Section 7 (a) of the Prevention of Corruption Act for taking illegal gratification. If convicted, they may face a jail term between six months and five years and are also liable to a fine.