VIJAYAWADA: Land grabbing incidents, it seems, refuse to end in Vijayawada. After seeing media reports in various vernacular TV Channels on Saturday that district joint collector (JC) K Vijaya Krishnan has announced magisterial inquiry into the Rs 40-crore land scam and asked the accused in the case to appear before the inquiry committee, more victims of alleged land grabbing queued up in front of her office, claiming that their lands too were encroached by close aides of Umamaheswara Rao.
With a hope, however little, of freeing their ancestral land from the clutches of land grabbers, two sisters - Atluri Lakshmi Bhavani(54) and Kollu Umadevi (49) - residents of Penamaluru village, reached the JC’s office on Saturday and complained that they were cheated by builders Kudaravalli Venkata Narasaiah and Polavarapu Kishan.
In the complaint submitted to the JC, the two sisters alleged that the accused, who claimed that they were close aides of Central MLA Bonda Umamaheswara Rao, approached them with the proposal of developing their 0.86 acres of land in Penamaluru. “Believing in their sweet words, we went on to sign an agreement in 2104 and received Rs 3 lakhs as token advance. It’s been more than three years now, but no construction activity has taken place in our land. Instead, they (the builders) are demanding Rs 1 crore from us to hand over our land to us. They filed a false case against us in court,” rued the sisters.
The sisters further alleged that the builders had also threatened them with death if they failed to register the land in the name of the builders. “They further claimed that they took Rs 4 crore loan for the construction, however it did not start. When we requested them to cancel the development agreement, they said it’s their government and they could do whatever they wanted,” the sisters said.
Kodali Kameswari, a resident of Vidydharapuram has a similar experience. She said that she purchased 400 square yards of house plot in survey number 41 at Ajit Singh Nagar in 2001 and later learnt that it was encroached by Maganti Babu, a close aide of Bonda Umamaheswara Rao. When she approached the police and the court, Maganti Babu reportedly threatened her and asked her to withdraw the case. “By registering irrecoverable General Power of Attorney (GPA) to 1.56 acres of land, the accused further divided the land into plots and sold them to other persons in 2007,” said Kameswari. She further alleged that Maganti Babu, Santhi Bhushan, Pitta Slaman Raju, Ramadasu, Adusumilli Ranga Rao and others were involved in the case.
“They entered our land forcefully and constructed perimeter wall,” she said.Six persons, Kolli Jyothi, K Anasuya, Dondapati Durga Rao, Mugadu Rambabu, L Ganga and Shaik Baji, whose lands, according to them, are in the clutches of Maganti Babu too came to the JC’s office on Saturday and requested her to take action against the land grabbers.
“All the six plots, altogether 1000 square yards in the Survey number 91/1, belong to us and have been encroached by Maganti Babu. When we approached police, they expressed their helplessness and said they could not enter in civil disputes,” the six alleged.