KOCHI: The Kerala State SC/ST Commission has called for a probe into the incidents of middlemen using the land documents of several dailt individuals to get a loan from public sector banks and then leaving the burden of loan repayment to the victims. P.N. Vijayakumar, chairman of the Commission, has issued an order in a series of petitions filed by 12 victims of the loan mafia in Kochi.
The complaints that came before the commission revealed a similar pattern by which the victims came to know about their property being mortgaged to a bank only when the bank initiated attachment proceedings.
“The SC victims realised that their property was notified for sale only when the notification appeared in the newspapers”, the commission found.
Based on the reports submitted by the sub-collector and assistant commissioner of police, the commi-ssion observed that “a gang was canvassing petty slum dwellers and making them liable for a huge amount of loan from nationalised banks and putting their property for sale dispossessing them of their property”.
The amount of loan varying from Rs 15 lakh to Rs 25 lakhs was “disproportionate to the extent of the market value of the land”.
The victims who had approached the commission belonged to Kakkanad, Mulavukadu, Irumpanam, Panambukad and other places in Ernakulam.
The commission said that a gang had “carved out rich dividends and properties in the metro town and it is to be investigated how far these innocent people were cheated and thrown out of their entire possession”.
The commission has also ordered that the petitioners who have lost 5 cents of land or less than 5 cents of land should be rehabilitated by the government.
The commission has also strongly recommended adequate compensation should be considered for victims in all other cases connected with similar cheating.
