CH NEWS, DHARWAD
The high-profile corruption scandal involving Dharwad Tahsildar Sachidananda Kuchanur, who was recently apprehended red-handed by Lokhashukta anti-corruption operatives while accepting a staggering 50-lakh-rupee cash bribe, has widened dramatically as aggrieved citizens and political leaders expose a massive web of fraudulent land transactions.
The arrested revenue official is currently languishing in judicial custody as anti-corruption investigators dig deeper into his administrative tenure. However, the scope of the probe has expanded far beyond the initial entrapment following explosive disclosures made by the Angadi family, who have stepped forward claiming to be the rightful, original owners of prime agricultural and commercial acreage in the district.
According to formal complaints lodged by the Angadi family, the 50-lakh-rupee payoff delivered by Manjunath Harali Katte—the individual caught facilitating the massive bribe—was merely the tip of a much larger, deeply entrenched criminal enterprise operating within local revenue administration corridors. The claimants allege that Harali Katte, acting in active collusion with the incarcerated Tahsildar and several other corrupt revenue department subordinates, orchestrated systematic and fraudulent alterations of official land registries. Specifically, the perpetrators allegedly manipulated cadastral surveys and revenue records concerning an expansive thirty-three-acre holding belonging to the Angadi family, fraudulently reclassifying valuable acreage as uncultivable wasteland (Kharab land) before orchestrating illegal commercial sales to third-party developers.
The revelations have sent political shockwaves across the northern Karnataka region, triggering intense demands for uncompromising judicial and financial investigations. Citing the colossal illicit cash flows and the multi-layered conspiracy required to execute large-scale land grabbing, the Angadi family has formally demanded the immediate constitution of a dedicated Special Investigation Team to conduct a comprehensive, statewide probe into historical property files handled by the accused officials.
Echoing these demands, prominent Janata Dal (Secular) leader Gururaj Hunasi Marad has publicly appealed to the Enforcement Directorate to intervene and initiate a parallel money-laundering investigation into the massive cash transactions and hidden assets tied to the syndicate. Political analysts note that as pressure mounts on state authorities, the expanding dragnet threatens to implicate multiple mid-level bureaucrats and politically connected intermediaries operating within Dharwad’s land administration ecosystem.