Land mafia held under PASA in Vadodara

A team of local crime branch of Vadodara rural police Wednesday detained one Prabhat Herba in connection with forging documents to grab agricultural lands,after the collector Vinod Rao invoked Prevention of Anti-Social Activities (PASA) against him and four others on April 30. Police said Herba was in the hiding and constantly on the move. He was caught from Gandhinagar where he had shifted in a rented apartment. Herba hails from Jasdan in Rajkot where he was allegedly involved in grabbing land based on forged documents.

Herba was considered to be the mastermind behind land deals that came under the scanner of the collectorate a few months ago,following complaints by one Atul Patel,who was in talks with them to sell off land belonging to him and others for Rs 5.2 crore.

The accused had given them cheques worth Rs 50 lakh as an initial amount of the deal,some of which bounced.

Herba was operating across the state and was involved in grabbing and selling seven separate pieces of land worth crores of rupees in Kheda,Rajkot,Vadodara,Jamnagar,and Gandhinagar,four of which were in Rajkot alone. He was also involved in luring farmers to fraudulently sign forged sales deed. Police also seized revolver and live cartridges from him.