Land sharks set sights on Musi riverbank areas in Amberpet constituency

Amberpet: Land-grabbers are allegedly thriving in areas along the Musi river in Amberpet constituency. They are brazenly resorting to land grabbing at will, allege concerned citizens.

It is learnt that the land sharks are filling up the river bed with soil and converting the land into plots and selling them to gullible customers, thus filling their pockets with moolah.

Not surprisingly, most of the riverbank areas have been grabbed.

Efforts by the encroachers to set their eyes on the remaining areas are allegedly on. They are filling such areas with lorry loads of debris and soil. They are indifferent to the repeated warning of the Revenue department officials.

On Tuesday, attempts by some persons allegedly to put up sheds was taken to the notice of Tahsildar Venugopal. He reached the spot behind Ganganagar Community Hall around 11 am along with staff. He caught Abbasani, Ramulu Yadav, Gopal Yadav and Mahesh Yadav dumping waste soil in the Musi greenlands.

The Tahsildar sternly warned them. Seeing the approaching Revenue staff, the driver of a JCB levelling the land fled the spot abandoning the machine, the staff told The Hans India. The revenue staff seized a tractor dumping soil at the spot and handed it over to the police. They also confiscated iron rods used for construction of sheds and sent them to the mandal office.

Venugopal told the media that anyone resorting to grabbing of lands would not be spared. Accompanying him were Surveyor Kiran, Special Revenue Inspector B V Mahesh Raju and VRO Veeraswamy.

Local residents told THI that only strong action against land-grabbers would deter such activities. They point out that as soon as the department staff leave the spot, the persons involved in such activities are back to their illegal business, actively bringing tractors and JCBs to level the lands, including those belonging to the government. The residents demand that such grabbers should be strongly punished.