Allahabad HC orders Lucknow police commissioner to probe land grabbing allegations against cops

The Allahabad High Court has ordered the Lucknow Police Commissioner to investigate allegations of land grabbing and threatening the land owner by some policemen from Gomti Nagar police station. The court has also asked the Commissioner to investigate the deed made in favour of the wife of a policeman. The Lucknow Bench of the court has also ordered the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Gomti Nagar to file the investigation report through a personal affidavit. The next hearing of the case will be on September 24. The order was passed by the division bench of Justice Sangeeta Chandra and Justice Brijraj Singh on Tuesday on the petition of Arvind Kumar Sharma. Petitioner's advocate Aviral Jaiswal said the petitioner had purchased a total of 2,250 square feet of land in Khargapur in the years 2004 and 2008. Since 2018, a person named Salim was trying to evict the petitioner from the said land, on which the petitioner complained to the top officials. When on November 2, 2020, some people came to forcibly occupy the land, the petitioner's son called the police but the then outpost in-charge Khargapur started pressuring the petitioner and his son to sell the land to the same people who wanted to evict them. During this, Awadhesh Singh, who was posted in Gomti Nagar police station at that time, threatened the petitioner's son to sell the land to them or else the construction he had done would be bulldozed. Another inspector from the police station, Arvind Pant, is also accused of threatening the petitioner's son. It was said that despite so many threats, when the petitioner was not ready to sell his land, a deed was made by Salim's father Mohammad Hanif in the name of Urmila Singh, wife of Awadhesh Singh. The boundaries of the petitioner's land were marked in the said deed. It is alleged that now the local police and the said policemen are constantly trying to evict the petitioner from the land, while despite the complaint, the Police Commissioner and the District Magistrate also did not take any action. Not only this, considering the matter as a civil dispute, the Chief Judicial Magistrate (CJM), Lucknow also rejected the petitioner's application.