Owners in Telangana may never get back land 'acquired' by gangster Nayeem

Telangana police officials claimed Nayeem and his gang members had manipulated land records with the active connivance of some sub-registrars.

	File photo
File photo
HYDERABAD: Though police are in the process of attaching nearly 1,300 acres of land 'acquired' by Nayeemuddin and his henchmen mostly by coercion, the gangster's victims may never get back their property due to limitations in law pertaining to land registration.

Telangana police officials claimed Nayeem and his gang members had manipulated land records with the active connivance of some sub-registrars. Even if police start digging out details about the actual owner of each property, they still cannot restore the properties to their rightful owners as there was no provision of restoration.

"There is no provision in the Registration Act wherein police or any other agency can take back land from a person after registration. Now that Nayeem is dead, the government can attach the land and take it over from persons to whom the gangster had sold properties or kept it for himself under benami names. However, there is no provision for restoration of land to the victims after registration formalities," a senior Telangana police officer, who is involved in the probe, told TOI. The victims can hope for justice only if the government amends the Registration Act.

In most cases, Nayeem had threatened land owners to sell their properties at throwaway prices. He used to get the title transferred first on the name of his benamis and later put it up for sale to interested parties.

"In 2007, Sheik Shakeel and Penta Narasimha, claiming to be associates of 'Bhaisaab' (Nayeem), removed marking stones of 1,756 open plots, mostly belonging to ex-servicemen, ECIL and bank employees, at a layout in Bhongir and sold the land (156 acres). They forcibly snatched land documents from our society members and paid paltry sums ranging between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000. We want the government to restore our plots to us. Some real estate firms going by the name of Temple Township are threatening us even now and preventing us from entering our layout,'' P Naresh, general secretary, Sri Lakshmi Narsimha Swamy Nagar Plot Owners' Welfare Association, told TOI.

Nayeem took advantage of the lacunae in the land registration process. Investigators were finding it difficult to track the genuine land owners due to lack of computerisation of land records, especially in Nalgonda district.

Also, the Nayeem gang did double registrations with the help of the sub-registrars. As a result, most of the records were not computerised. If a prospective property buyer attempts to take an encumbrance certificate (EC) of these properties at any MeeSeva center, it usually throws up a blank page.

Police have also discovered that the Nayeem gang helped a prominent real estate firm convert a parcel of land in a conservation zone into a real estate venture. The realty firm occupied government land in Balapur, which is in the conservation zone as per the Hyderabad Metropolitan Development Authority (HMDA) master plan and developed it into a gated community.

Some locals also brought the issue to the notice of the SIT after it recently arrested Nayeem's associate Riyaz. They claimed that Riyaz had been helping the realty firm and his men even attacked officials when they went to stop development work.

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