Drive against encroachments frees 3K acres

In the biggest ever antiencroachment drive in Madhya Pradesh, around 3,000 acres worth hundreds of crores have been freed in Indore.

The drive undertaken jointly by the local administration and police on Thursday led to recovery of the encroached land from land sharks in the city, a senior officer of Indore district said.

The lands were in the illegal possession of the land mafias in Indore for around two decades. Twelve people were booked in this connection. An official probe has unearthed the modus operandi of the landsharks to grab government and private lands by taking recourse to forgery, sources said.

The land mafia formed housing societies to create land banks and then sold the same plots to several people by using fake documents, the probe has found.

“We have received complaints against 128 out of total 858 housing societies in Indore alleging land grabbing by them”, Mr Singh said.

Indore which has earned the sobriquet of ‘mini-Mumbai’ for its proximity to Mumbai and hence the city has attracted real estate barons from Mumbai and other big cities in the country to invest in the sector, leading to proliferation of land sharks there.

Police suspected a strong presence of Mumbai underworld also in the real estate sector in Indore.

“We have received reports that several Mumbai underworld dons have made huge investments in the real estate sector in Indore, one of the key financial hubs of India, by proxy, leading to growth of land grabbing cases by leaps and bounds in recent times.

“A probe was on into it”, a senior police officer of Indore told this newspaper requesting anonymity.