Hyderabad: Telangana high court has directed the release of land compensation to a farmer after payments were stalled due to a multi-crore scam involving a court official.Justice Nandikonda Narsing Rao, while allowing the petition filed by Kurva Hanumanthu from Jogulamba Gadwal District, ruled that legitimate claimants cannot be made scapegoats for internal administrative failures or criminal acts of court staff.In the present case, the court directed the release of the petitioner’s compensation within three months and emphasised that while the ongoing criminal investigation was vital, it should not serve as a blanket excuse to deny genuine claimants their dues.To safeguard public money while protecting claimants and to ensure affected land owners receive their rightful compensation, the judge issued a comprehensive set of permanent directions. These included instructions to district collectors to provide duplicate deposit forms to reconcile accounts and an order to the Anti-Corruption Bureau to ensure recovered funds were redeposited into court accounts.For a permanent solution, the court also mandated new protocols for judicial officers and section staff. All future petitions must undergo a three-tier internal audit, requiring claimants to appear physically in court on non-judicial working days for identification and provide affidavits undertaking to refund any excess payments.The court ordered digitisation of financial registers and mandatory annual reconciliation of accounts to be supervised by the high court Registry.These directions, the court noted, establish a strict framework for transparency, requiring judicial staff to verify all payment histories with the district treasury to prevent double payments and ensure administrative accountability.The petitioner’s grievance centred on the refusal of the senior civil judge at Gadwal to process his request for the release of compensation. Hanumanthu lost over seven acres of land for the Ryalampad balancing reservoir project.After a long legal battle over the title, which was settled in his favour by the high court in 2024, he sought to withdraw the deposited amount. However, the lower court returned his application, citing oral instructions to stop payments for all deposits made before April 2022 due to a massive financial scandal.The high court was informed that a former senior superintendent, who served between 2015 and 2022, allegedly siphoned off funds from the civil court deposits (CCD).A probe revealed that ₹3.08 crore was misappropriated through nine fraudulent cheques issued to the official’s wife, following which the Anti-Corruption Bureau registered a criminal case and started an investigation involving tampering with ledger entries and the disappearance of vital payment registers.Defending the action, the high court registry, representing the lower court, argued that the freeze on payments was a necessary administrative precaution.It highlighted that missing records and serious discrepancies in account statements made it difficult to determine the actual balance available to satisfy claims without causing further deficits.Dismissing these concerns as vague, the high court noted that Hanumanthu’s compensation of ₹8,08,700 was deposited in March 2012, well before the scam began in 2015. Including interest, the total value grew to ₹18.22 lakh.
