SPECIAL REPORT / ANCHOR
JAMMU: Despite Anti Corruption Bureau’s drive against wrong-doers and corrupt officials in Jammu and Kashmir, a Crorepati Forest Guard continues to mock the system by flaunting his affluence and neo-richness to ‘impress’ friends, relatives and neighbours.
Running a real estate business in the name of his wife, the lower-rung forest official hailing from Domana area in the outskirts of the Jammu City is reported to have property worth Rs 20 crore.
“The Forest Guard has adopted a life style which is beyond the reach of top officers in the administration or big business tycoons and one wonders how a ‘small timer’ of the recent past has turned affluent just in years”, said a neighbour, on the condition of anonymity, while talking to STATE TIMES after the publication of report about the Forest Guard.
The neighbour said the household has transformed in a big way with each member leading luxurious life, as if they have found a magic wand. He said his affluence aptly proves the popular adage of people living in tribal areas that ‘Rab Tenu Raakha Banawe’. However, the richness of the ‘low paid’ official owes its genesis to the ‘kindness’ of immediate and superior officers of the Forest Department, whose blessings are with the Forest Guard, obviously in lieu of consideration. He is regularly being paid his salaries, half of which go as ‘consideration money’ by way of cash and costly gifts to the officers who shield his acts of omission and commission. He is a blue boy of the superiors as known to the subordinate staff, which treat him no less than the ‘boss’.
According to some of his colleagues, the Forest Guard continues to be present on the official records notwithstanding the fact that he has not even frequented his office for nearly four years. The real estate business in the name of his spouse is thriving, not just by putting in hard toil, but using the connections, leading to selling of land plots on asking prices. The modus operandi of the Forest Guard is to lure the clients about prime locations, which he manages when the customer shows willingness to buy. Other than the forest land, the normal plots are being sold in connivance with the local police officers.
The plots are reportedly sold on far higher prices than shown while completing the formalities of the registration.
“There is a set mechanism of the clandestine and open sale of plots and other properties”, the neighbour added.
The people in his close vicinity wonder how a lower grade employee can manage disproportionate assets far beyond his known source of income with the ACB claiming action against the corrupt.