HC imposes Rs 10 lakh cost on Catholic Diocese of Gorakhpur, UP govt over wrongful land possession

Prayagraj: The Allahabad High Court has imposed a cost of Rs 10 lakh on the Catholic Diocese of Gorakhpur and Uttar Pradesh government jointly for wrongfully taking over possession of a land belonging to a villager, depriving the land owner and his legal heirs from usage of the land for more than 32 years.

The villager Bhola Singh died during the pendency of case.

“The second appeal, accordingly, stands dismissed with cost of Rs 10,00,000 (Rs 10 lakh) to be jointly borne by the appellant and the State Government and its functionaries in equal share,” the court said, dismissing the second appeal filed by the Catholic Diocese of Gorakhpur.

Justice Kshitij Shailendra on Tuesday said, “Once this court has arrived at a conclusion that the action of the state as well as appellant did not have any sanction of law, rather it amounted to grabbing land of a rustic villager and committing trespass over it, the instant appeal deserves to be dismissed with heavy cost.” Singh and his heirs land in Gorakhpur was wrongly given to the diocese by the state government on a lease. The diocese plea was that the land was handed over by Singh to the state government during the ceiling process and later on the same land was given to the diocese for construction of a hospital.

The court observed that as per state government record, only the share of another co-owner and not of Singh, was handed over to the state government but documents in this regard were not brought on record to avoid any adverse inference and therefore, the state government had no right to give land of Singh on lease to the diocese.

Singh had filed a suit stating that he was in possession of plot No. 26 situated at Mauza Jangal Salikram in Gorakhpur.

As the Catholic Diocese started raising a boundary wall on the land and the plaintiff objected to it, the defendants threatened him to start construction of a hospital over the land.

It was alleged through amendment that a lease deed was said to have been executed by defendant No. 2, (State of UP) in favour of defendant No. 1 (appellant here, Catholic Diocese), though the State had no right to execute a lease.

The court said the State and the appellant together and with the aid of the entire State machinery at district and secretariat level by manipulating documents, one after another, resulted in depriving the plaintiff and his legal heirs of possession and utilisation of their immovable property for a period of more than 32 years.