Hyderabad: A case has been filed in the High Court by the Defence Estate Officer regarding the ownership of 52.5 acres of land located near the Golconda fort.
The land is being claimed by an individual as his own property and the claim of the Defence Estate Officer is that it belongs to the defence ministry.
A case has been filed alleging violation of the Public Premises (Eviction of Unauthorised Occupants) Act.
The 52.5 acre land under dispute is part of about 104 acre land near Golconda, in which the Telangana Chief Minister has evinced interest to get state ownership. The remaining part of the 104 acre land is defence land.
The history of the 104 acre land is an interesting one. According to old military records, the land is known as Old Cantonment Garden.
The piece of land was transferred to the defence ministry after the annexation of Hyderabad into India, as a part of about 1,650 acre Nizam land that was transferred to the ministry.
According to old records, the 52.5 acre land was given to a Colonel E. Ross for the purpose of maintaining gardens.
However, a few years later, the Colonel was not to be found anywhere and the land was being tilled for agriculture by a person who claimed that he shared ownership with the Colonel. This was around 1976.
A case was then filed against the claimant. During the course of this case, the claimant died and his wife became a claimant.
The case was finally won by the defence authorities. However, again a third party owner presented himself with some official papers of the revenue department claiming to have bought the land from the earlier litigant’s wife.
A case was filed again against this new claimant by the defence authorities in the district court.
