E-Paper
Bullets make unheard voices resonate after 64 years
Repeated requests by the tribals of Umbha village in Sonbhadra district of eastern Uttar Pradesh fell on deaf ears for 64 years until 11 of them were killed in a
Repeated requests by the tribals of Umbha village in Sonbhadra district of eastern Uttar Pradesh fell on deaf ears for 64 years until 11 of them were killed in a dispute over possession of the same land on July 17, a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe suggested.
Tribal families had been farming this land since the pre-Independence period. They started raising objections in 1955, when 212 bighas of farmland in Umbha village was transferred to an agricultural society, said officials of the state police’s SIT who are privy to the investigation into the alleged fraud in land revenue records. The state government had ordered the investigation after the July 17 killings.
Time and again, the tribals demanded that the authorities should look into the records of Aadhar Varsh Khatauni, the first land revenue record prepared in 1951 after independence, the officials said.
“The 1951 land record clearly says the land belongs to the gram sabha and it was in possession of tribal families who were farming it since the pre-Independence (period),” an SIT official said, while sharing the findings of the investigation done in the past four months.
Deputy inspector general (DIG) of SIT J Ravinder Goud said the probe into the land transfer records was in an advanced stage now and a charge sheet was likely against those responsible for transferring government land in the names of individuals without checking the records of 1951.
He also said the irregularities began after formation of Adarsh Krishi Sahkari Samiti, a farming society, in 1955 with 12 members. He said the society itself was formed wrongfully as most of its members were not locals and were not engaged in farming. Moreover, the land transfer to the society was done by a tehsildar, who was not authorised to do the same, he added.
Only one of the 12 members, Asha Mishra, the wife of a former IAS officer, is alive now.
The official said the tribals kept contesting their cases at different levels and continued to farm the land. He said the society land was later transferred to individuals in the names of Asha Mishra and her daughter Vineeta Sharma alias Kiran Kumari by the then subdivisional magistrate (SDM) of Sonbhadra, Ashok Kumar Srivastava in 1989.
“Then also, the tribal families raised an objection to transfer of land (ownership) in private persons’ names and appealed to consider the facts mentioned in the 1951 land records,” he said.
Earlier on September 11, Ashok Kumar Srivastava, who later got promoted to the IAS cadre and retired a few months ago, was questioned over the land transfer process in the matter.
Another official privy to the investigation said the same land was sold to local village pradhan Yagya Dutt in 2017 when it could not be freed from the possession of tribal families.
He said the tribal families again raised an objection but their application was rejected every time.
They approached the then district magistrate Ankit Agarwal but their claim was rejected for the last time on July 6 earlier this year, he said. The same was conveyed to the tribal families by post on July 13. Only four days later, 11 tribal people were killed, allegedly in indiscriminate firing by Yagya Dutt and his aides in the dispute over possession of the same farming land.
The SIT has questioned two former district magistrates of Sonbhadra, Ankit Agarwal and Amit Kumar Singh, as well as two SDMs of Ghorawal block — Manikandan, a 2016-batch IAS officer, and Provincial Civil Service (PCS) officer Vijay Prakash Tewari.
