The State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) came down on the District Police Chief (Kozhikode Rural) for not submitting a report it had sought in August on the alleged cheating of a tribesperson by quarry owners who gave him an uninhabitable land in place of the property they had procured from him.
The officer was told to submit the report within a week as the case was to be heard at the next district-level sitting of the Commission on October 28.
The complainant, Chelakkara Koran from Paikkadan Mala in Karasseri panchayat, had alleged that 2.16 acres were snatched from him by the owners of a quarry named Palakkal Granites, and that the land given to him in replacement was a partial forest land without the required ownership documents.
The departments of Forest and Scheduled Tribes had earlier submitted reports to the Commission on the issue. The Nilambur North Division Forest Officer informed the Commission that the land where Koran resided now was in the Kodampuzha forest division in Malappuram district, and that 10 cents of it constituted forest land. The remaining 2.5 acres is owned by a private individual though the quarry owners claimed that it had been handed over to Koran. The report recommended legal action against the quarry owners for snatching Koran’s land.
The Tribal Development Officer has also submitted a report saying that the said land was uninhabitable.
The Commission had taken up the case suo motu based on media reports.
