The city police claim to have saved 66 acres of land worth Rs1,000 crore in upscale Koramangala from land sharks.
The central crime branch of the city police has arrested six people for trying to grab the land by floating a fake housing society. It is also questioning the motive of the society to which the land was originally allotted.
The 66.22 acres of land was purchased by the Shanthinagar House Building Cooperative Society from the government in 1986. The society, established in 1965, has 431 ordinary members and 52 associate members. The land was to be divided into plots and sold to those members of the society who were government employees.
As many as 156 sites were allotted to eligible members and investors in 2004. However, trouble started when a fake society with the same name also started allotting the sites.
In March 2005, Shivarao Upendra Prabhu, the president of the original society, filed a private complaint before the 10th additional chief metropolitan magistrate against the fake society. The case was referred to the Viveknagar police.
But when the police did not act on the complaint, the case was transferred in 2008 to the crime branch, which arrested GP Reddy, 50, of Hyderabad; Lakshman, 70, and Shashi Kumar, both from Adugodi; Sreekanta and Thyagaraj, both from Langford Road; and V Chandrashekhar of Laljinagar, for floating the fake society.
The crime branch, however, is questioning the motive of the original society also. “None of its members had constructed any house in the so-called layout,” police commissioner Shankar M Bidari said. “This makes us wonder if the society is legal. Also, why did the society allot sites to its 156 members only in 2004 when the government had given the land in 1983? Why was there a delay of 18 years in allotting the sites?”
“We have found a lot of foul play in the entire case,” Bidari said.
He said the police were taking the help of all departments concerned to find out the details of the scam. “We have saved the large tract of land in Koramangala,” the commissioner said. “We are proceeding to restore the land back to government,” he said.
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