Police map farmland disputes across Beed dist to reduce flare-ups during sowing season

Beed Superintendent of Police, Harssh Poddar, said last year he had noted around June (kharif sowing season) and October-November (rabi sowing season), there were a high number of land dispute cases. “Majority of these disputes would lead to violence. To reduce this, the Beed police decided to take preventive measures this year,” Poddar said.

The first step, the SP said, was to find the total number of such land disputes in Beed. “Normally, a beat chowki of a police station has around 15-20 villages under its jurisdiction. A constable was assigned to coordinate with the Gram Sevaks (village development officer) and Talathis (revenue officers) of these villages along with the civil courts. The constable was then tasked to prepare a chart to map out the land dispute cases in each village,” Poddar said, adding around 85 per cent of these disputes were found to be related to matters of inheritance.

According to Poddar, a similar methodology — possibly a first-of-its-kind in Maharashtra — was adopted on a smaller scale in rural Malegaon earlier. “Normally, police are involved when a land dispute leads to an offence. Here, we are trying to intervene before it can lead to an offence,” he said.

Constable Prabhakar Nakhate of Lokhandi-Sawargaon beat under Ambajogai rural police station said there are seven villages under his beat circle.

“We made preparations in advance, even before the sowing season is underway. I coordinated with the gram sevaks and talathis for details about disputes and wrote to the court magistrates seeking details of the civil disputes. It can take a while to get all the documents,” Nakhate said.

A majority of these land disputes, Nakhate said, were among family members who want to sell their share of land. “The father may have divided the land amongst his children orally, but not recorded it officially. After his death, some of his children may want to sell their share of the land and move out. As there is an ambiguity on the boundaries of the plot given to the siblings, it often leads to a fight among them.”

Once mapped out, the local police initiate one of the three measures: first, if the dispute has not seen any violence in the past, they merely issue a notice under section 149 of the Criminal Procedure Code that warns a person that committing a certain action could lead to a cognizable offence; second, if the dispute has led to legal action in the past, like a case of rioting, police issue notices under sections 107 and 110 of the CrPC under which the person signs a bond of good behaviour; in the third and extreme cases, police can also register an FIR.

Poddar said while in June last year, there were a total of 40 cases of land disputes which had led to legal action, this year only 21 such cases had come forward.

“The cases that have come up are mostly instantaneous incidents like someone’s bullock grazing into another’s farm thereby destroying crops,” Poddar said.

He added that Rabi sowing (winter crop) season in 2019 winter witnessed 39 per cent reduction in land disputes as compared to 2018.

Police have also issued notices to tractor owners in each village to ensure they do not aid sparring parties by illegally demolishing boundary walls using the vehicle.

“In such a case, the tractor owner would also be made an accused in the case, which was not the case earlier. So far, we have three registered offences where a tractor owner too has been named as an accused,” Poddar said.

When contacted, Ambajogai Talathi, S Nanavare said, “The number of land dispute cases have reduced as compared to the last year. Normally, after we provide details of land disputes to the police, the concerned parties are called to the panchayat where officials, police and village elders are present. In most cases, the sparring parties realise that the dispute could continue indefinitely in the courts and agree to resolve it.”