India, Nov. 9 -- The Telangana High Court has sentenced the Collector of Ranga Reddy district to six months' simple imprisonment for wilful disobedience of its order, and imposed a fine, suspending the sentence for four weeks to let the officer appeal.

Justice K Lakshman passed the order while allowing a contempt petition, holding that the Collector had failed to decide a representation that the writ court had ordered him to dispose of within 60 days.

The dispute runs back to the implementation of an order passed in August 2022 by the then Collector, which deleted certain plots from the Prohibitory Properties Register under Section 22-A of the Registration Act, 1908. The petitioners, seeking no-objection clearances for those plots, move...