On court's direction, police book MLA for 'grabbing' land

Korba: Police have registered a case against a Congress MLA and his four associates for reportedly grabbing the land of a 55-year-old tribal in Chhattisgarh’s Korba district, following the direction from a local court.

Dukhlal Kanwar, a resident of Chuiya village, had filed a petition in a local court seeking action against the MLA, Jaisingh Agrawal, who represents the Korba constituency, and four others for reportedly capturing 0.45 hectare of his land.

The court of Special Judge under Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, Yogesh Pareek, had on January 15 directed the Anusuchit Janjati Kalyan (AJK) police station in Korba to lodge an FIR against the five people.

The AJK police on Saturday evening registered the case against the 48-year-old legislator and his associates – Surendra Jaiswal (52), Bhola Soni (38), Vijay Singh (48) and Darshan Manikpuri (45) – under various sections of the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, station house officer R S Mandavi said.

They were also booked under IPC sections, including 506 (B) (criminal intimidation), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy), he said. No one has been arrested so far, he said adding that further probe was on. According to Kanwar’s petition, Agrawal had purchased a piece of land in Chuiya village from one Abdul Gaffar in 2010.

When the boundary wall construction was underway on that plot in 2012, Kanwar had raised an objection saying that his land adjacent to it was captured in the process. Later, when the measurement of the plot was done by revenue inspector and patwari, it was found that besides 45 decimal belonging to Kanwar, the land of two other villagers was also illegally captured by Agrawal.

Subsequently, Kanwar lodged a complaint with police but no action was taken, the petition said. Last November, Kanwar filed the application under Section 156(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code in the court seeking action against the MLA and his associates.