At gunpoint, Army stops Pune road construction

A meeting was due between civic and military authorities on Wednesday to sort out the issue, but the Army preferred to take it to the streets. The climax came when Army officials moved a truck to the middle of the road to stop the PMC bulldozer.

After the soldiers stopped construction work, Army officers had a heated debate with scores of angry residents at the Empress Garden View Housing Society and Sopan Baug area, all of whom want the road constructed.

‘‘They cannot intimidate people with guns,’’ said Maj Gen (retd) P.D. Sherlekar, secretary of the Empress Garden Housing Society. ‘‘I have already shot a letter to the police commissioner asking for police security.’’

The scene hotted-up as the civic body’s Deputy Commissioner (Special) Suhas Diwse vehemently protested the Army’s ‘‘intimidating style’’ of stopping work. After talking to the municipal commissioner, Diwse asked the contractor to continue working.

Diwse said the PMC’s City Survey Office clearly showed that the eastern part of the Bhairoba nullah belonged to two private parties. ‘‘The PMC has acquired the land … from these two parties in April this year,’’ he said. The PMC, he noted, had passed a proposal to build the road way back in 1996. Col Om Pawar, of the Pune Sub-area, said he was only doing his duty.

‘‘The PMC is encroaching upon a A-1 defence land according to the records of the Defence Estates Office (DEO),’’ he said. ‘‘I am bound by my duty to protect defence land.’’

According to the DEO’s office, the PMC has encroached upon land (measuring 4152 sq ft on GLR survey no 225) known in the Army map as Bhairoba nullah. The PMC registered a complaint at the Wanawadi police station against the soldiers for obstructing official work by force.