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Bareilly clash: Land freed from illegal possession, 16 held in past week
The Bareilly district administration, police and revenue officials initiated stern action against two groups that clashed on January 11 leaving three people dead and injuring 29 others
The Bareilly district administration, police and revenue officials initiated stern action against two groups that clashed on January 11 leaving three people dead and injuring 29 others.
The action comes a week after the group clash which took place in a Bareilly village.
The group clash was fallout of a battle for supremacy between the two groups led by a local history-sheeter Suresh Pal Singh Tomar alias Suresh Pradhan and a Punjab resident Param Vir Singh to occupy over 2,500 bighas of fertile land on the Bareilly-Badaun border.
A local police official on Thursday said that the tehsildar Sher Bahadur Singh evaluated the land under possession of Param Vir Singh, who had cultivated sugarcane over it. He said the tehsildar with the help of a police team crushed the entire crop cultivated on around 160 bighas of land. He said the land free from the possession of Param Vir Singh was handed over to the pradhan of Govindpuri village.
He said further evaluation of occupied land continued on Thursday and many more bighas of land will soon be verified and freed from illegal possession.
The police official said that so far, as many as 16 people have been arrested including 10 from Suresh Pradhan’s group and six from Param Vir Singh’s group. One of the prime accused, Suresh Pradhan, however, is undergoing treatment at a private hospital in Bareilly under police security and will soon be taken into custody.
He said the police had prepared a list of around 50 people from both sides whose locations were found at the spot at the time of incident. He said the police are carrying out raids in search of these people and strict action will be taken against them.
He said that Param Vir Singh has migrated from Punjab and occupied several bigha of land in the region, made a farm house there, and does sugarcane farming. Suresh Pradhan, who is a local muscleman and history-sheeter, tried to challenge the supremacy of Param Vir Singh and tried to take possession of the same land, he added.
During the clash, over 50 rounds were fired from more than a dozen firearms and weapons like swords and other sharp-edged objects were used for nearly 45 minutes by both groups.
The incident occurred at Govindpur of Katka Raman gram panchayat under Faridipur police station limits. Those killed were identified as -- Sardar Parmenda Singh and Sardar Devendra Singh, both of whom were part of Paramvir Singh group; and Gul Mohammed Golu from the group of Suresh Pal Singh Tomar, the former pradhan of adjoining Raipur Hansh village, according to police. Other men -- who sustained bullet or sword injuries -- are undergoing treatment at the district hospital.
In the incident, Paramvir Singh’s farmhouse manager, Khajanchi Lal, got an FIR filed against Suresh Pal Singh Tomar, and 17 other named accused while he mentioned 15 other unidentified people. The counter-complaint from the second group of Suresh Pradhan is still awaited.
