State Police Violate Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2010
Staff Reporter
GUWAHATI: The purpose of the Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2010 is not being served in the State as the police, in most of the land grabbing cases, opt to mediate between land grabbers and victims, instead of sending the cases to the tribunals. This is a glaring deviation from the standard course set by the Act.
Following increasing allegations of land grabbing incidents and allegations of police refusing to register cases when victims moved them with complaints, the State Government enacted the Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act in 2010.
According to the Act, the police have to register a case against every land grabbing complaint and send the case to the special tribunal in the district concerned for disposal. Each of the districts in the State has such a special tribunal formed in accordance with Clause 7 of the Act.
However, in most of the cases, this clear-cut rule is being violated by various police stations in the State. Instead of sending the cases to their respective special tribunals, the police, as often as not, mediate between the land grabbers and the victims even as this practice goes against the spirit of the Act. Allegations go that in such mediation by the police, either the victims (if they are weak) are made to accept a meagre amount or the cases are disposed by reaching an ‘understanding’. And statistics back this allegation. Till 2018 since the enactment of the Act in 2010, as many as 800 land grabbing cases were registered in various police stations in Kamrup (Metro). However, around 400 of the cases were disposed in the police stations without sending them to the special tribunal. Such incidents happen not only in Guwahati, in other districts in the State as well.
It is still a mystery as to why the number of land grabbing cases in most of the urban areas in the State is minimal. There are allegations that police stations often refuse to register cases when they receive complaints of land grabbing. In a recent case, the Gauhati High Court has asked the CID to investigate against a top-level police officer in a land grabbing case.
A PIL (10/2018) regarding the investigation of land grabbing cases had been admitted in the Gauhati High Court in 2018. The High Court had asked the State Government to send details on the progress of investigation of land grabbing cases. However, the government did not send its status report on investigation of land grabbing cases to the High Court. The High Court asked Dispur on June 20, 2019 again to send the status report to it on the progress of investigation.
According to sources, be it in Guwahati or any other places, generally affluent people are directly or indirectly involved in land grabbing. Apart from an active land mafia, such people, because of their money power, can slow down investigations against them with the help of the police.