JAMMU: With Jammu becoming haven for land-grabbers over the years, the petty criminals have found avenues to flourish by indulging in unscrupulous means in connivance and active support of revenue and police officers. As a result, the small time criminals have scripted a ‘success story’ of growing ‘rags to riches’ overnight in literal sense of term.
The role of police has become more pronounced in land grabbing in recent years. Earlier, unscrupulous revenue officials used to encourage the land-grabbers by keeping them posted with information about the potential land plots and modus operandi to be adopted for grabbing these. Later, however, police become party to this illegal business. As per sources, police has been playing more prominent role in the incidents of land-grabbing by turning Nelson’s eye. This was evident at Bhagwati Nagar area on right banks of River Tawi where huge encroachments on the land belonging to Jammu Development Authority were only removed after the courts intervened. Given to police, the eviction had turned as a law and order problem, as the grabbers were confident that the police is not going to take any action against them.
Insiders say that the complaints by the aggrieved parties with regard to encroachment of land by chronic-grabbers would not invoke the action by police for obvious reasons.
The scenario has become so murkier after some unscrupulous police officers and personnel took centre-stage in land grabbing, rendering the role of unscrupulous revenue officials as secondary. They are now kept out of the loop that the booty is shared by unscrupulous police officers and the land grabbers. The revenue officials are brought in picture only as and when needed to tamper with the revenue records.
Be it Reasi, Kathua or any other part of the Jammu province, the land grabbing is going unabated resulting in murderous assaults on rival groups. Such incidents also prove to be beneficial for the unscrupulous police officers, who have better of both the worlds from the opposite parties. In a shocking incident of a land grabbing attempt in Bari Brahmana area, a middle rung police officer was exposed for getting Rs 50 lakh and a plot of one Kanal of land to save the land grabber. He ensured that junior did not take any action against the land-grabber. In another case, the police officers failed to slap Public Safety Act against a chronic land-grabber of Jammu, allegedly on monetary considerations. The land grabber had been booked under PSA on an earlier occasion also.Land grabbing has been a gender-free proposition in Jammu. When the acts of a lady Deputy Superintendent of Police in land grabbing got exposed she approached J&K Women Commission with complaints against her seniors in order to divert the attention from her ‘bad deeds.’The land grabbing has been taking place at other levels as well. A serving senior officer is facing serious allegations of shielding land grabbers for monetary considerations in his capacity as Deputy Commissioner, Reasi.
