Stamp duty paid was subpar

The names of P.S. Prasad and Goldstone Infratech Limited figured prominently in the Miyapur land scam unearthed earlier this year. Mr Prasad and his brother Mr Parthasarathi and another person, P.V.S. Sharma, connived with the subregistrar, R. Srinivasa Rao, to register four false sale documents for 691.04 acres of government land and another two documents for 119 acres in Miyapur.

The Stamps and Registrations department estimated that the government should have earned `600 crore in stamp duty for the six registration documents, but since the documents were registered in another category, stamp duty of just `1 lakh for each of the eight documents was paid. Preliminary estimates revealed that the land was worth `10,000 crore.

Later on, in the investigation, officials suspected that Mr Prasad had bought the land in order to get compensation from the Hyderabad Metro Rail Limited as the sales agreements made by him were not having any boundaries.

The modus operandi of Mr Prasad is that he creates fabricated documents in two names without the knowledge of the actual owners and the two parties go to court both claiming ownership. Later, one of the parties goes in for a compromise and gets a compromise-decree from the court. Based on the compromise decree, it is very easy to obtain mutations, layout and building permissions.