Dumka, June 29: CBI today conducted simultaneous raids in 52 places in Jharkhand and Bihar to probe a land scam worth over Rs 1,000 crore in the temple town of Deoghar where 826 acre government land was fraudulently sold after tampering with land records in connivance with local officials.

The CBI, which set up a camp office in Dumka about 10 days ago, sent out teams to Deoghar, Dhanbad, Sahebganj and Latehar to search homes of former and current government officials — many of them working in district record rooms — besides middlemen working for the land mafia.

According to CBI SP of Dhanbad P.K. Maji, the raids were conducted in 11 districts of Jharkhand and Bihar. In Dhanbad, the CBI searched two places. One, was the house of Deoghar sub-registrar Ruplal Manjhi and the other was that of Dhanbad corporation deputy administrator Shankar Chaudhary.

In Deoghar, the investigating agency knocked on the doors of Mithilesh Jha, the local record room in-charge, and seized several papers, which the agency claimed would help them establish local officials’ complicity in the scam.

Residences of others like Dhruv Parihast, the alleged kingpin who is under arrest, and Sunil Khawade, a middleman working for land sharks, were also raided.

In Dumka, a CBI team raided the Dudhani locality house of Jai Prakash Lal, who is posted at the Deoghar record room, and paid a visit to the local registry office.

The Deoghar land scam was unearthed in August last year after a deputy commissioner, Mast Ram Meena, discovered that between 2009 and 2011, 826 acre land in Deoghar, Mohanpur, Madhupur and Karon circles of the district had been fraudulently sold after tampering with land documents with the help of some government officials.

But Meena also realised that the illegal sale in violation of Santhal Pargana Tenancy Act was gong on for a long time.

Within a fortnight of the deputy commissioner sending a detailed report on the scam to Ranchi, a fire in the district treasury destroyed several crucial documents kept in the store room.

Records room in-charge Jha lodged an FIR on the fire on September 1, 2011, but the CBI has not ruled him out as an accomplice.

On September 6, chief minister Arjun Munda ordered a vigilance bureau inquiry into the Deoghar land scam. But a couple of days later, sensing the magnitude of the fraud, he ordered a CBI probe, while allowing vigilance to continue enquiries to prevent local land sharks and officials from tampering with records till such time the central agency took up the case.

Of the 54 people named accused, four have been arrested: alleged kingpin Dhruv Parihast, Naresh Manjhi, Sunil Poddar and Madhusudan Jha. Deoghar deputy commissioner K. Ravi Kumar has already suspended district record room head clerk Amal Badai and clerk Niranjan Kumar Rai for allegedly helping the scamsters steal land documents.

Three of the accused have died: Amin Rajak, Mani Busan and Kuldip Dwari.