Andhra Pradesh land sharks face heat

Mr Kumar said, “We have already opened rowdy sheets against 12 persons involved in land grabbing cases. A few more are in the pipeline and it is an ongoing process. Land related issues like double registrations, impersonation, forgery, and criminal intimidation are increasing as the capital is coming up in this area. Property disputes have become major concerns in policing. Every day we are getting cases. We have opened rowdy sheets and we will open gang files too.”

He added, “Rowdy sheets are opened against individual offenders. Gang files are against group of people resorting to organised crimes. In land grabbing cases they don’t operate alone. Every day we are receiving four to five complaints.”According to the cop, more cases are being reported from Mangalgiri, Tadikonda and Tadepalli areas. The villages in Mangalgiri and Tadepalli mandal, which are semi urban, also fall in the proposed capital area of 29 villages. Tullur falls under the Guntur rural district police.

The Tullur police, meanwhile, said there were fewer cases in their jurisdiction as there are no layouts and only farmers were selling the lands. Tullur sub inspector Y. Atchaiah said, “Before the announcement of coordinates of the capital, farmers sold land for Rs75 lakh per acre. After the coordinates were announced, the rate went up to Rs1.2 crore per acre to Rs1.4 crore per acre. So farmers who had already entered into sale agreements with buyers are now refusing to sell them at the old price.

Due to this the buyers are approaching us, complaining that the farmers are not registering the sale deeds. However, we are not entertaining these issues as they are ‘civil’ in nature.”He added, “Farmers should approach courts. So far with us there are no serious cases of land disputes or grabbing. As most of them are farmers they do scrutinise the documents. But in semi urban areas there are a lot of layouts and plots where double registrations took place.”