Kota: Encroachers pelt stones at UIT squad

KOTA: At least six home guards of Kota Urban Improvement Trust’s (UIT) anti-encroachment squad sustained minor injuries after they were attacked by encroachers on the Meenabai residential scheme land on Deoli-Arab Road under Borekheda police station on Tuesday. However, no police case was registered in this connection.

UIT had launched the Meenabai residential scheme about three months ago on its land in Deoli-Arab Road and started work for the residential colony, but the locals around the area had illegally cultivated crops and vegetables on the land. The UIT encroachment squad on Tuesday reached the area to remove the encroachment and to put the marking of the plots, as it had already announced through lottery the names of the aspirants who had applied for acquiring houses in the residential scheme.

As the squad reached the spot, the encroachers already alert there, started pelting stones at the squad, said UIT tehsildar Ramkalyan Yadav. The encroachers had cultivated crops over the scheme’s land as the JCB started rooting out the crops, they pelted stones at the squad and halted the work, he said, adding at least six personnel of the squad sustained minor injuries in the stone pelting. In return, the UIT squad also retaliated.

A large part of the encroached land has been freed and in next couple of days, second round of encroachment drive would be taken up to remove the remaining encroachment, Yadav said.

Meanwhile, SHO at Borekheda police station Harendra SIngh said the police was not informed of the operation by the encroachment squad but when the police reached the spot, the UIT squad had left the place. No case of attack on the squad by encroachers has been registered by UIT and no one was detained or arrested, he added. The tehsildar of Deoli-Arab area Badri Lal, on the other hand, refuted reports of UIT squad personnel sustaining injuries in the stone-pelting.

Declining any stone-pelting, confrontation, lathi-charge and injury to the squad personnel, UIT secretary Bhawani Singh Palawat said the operation was a routine anti-encroachment drive over the illegally occupied UIT land and the outburst of anger and protest by those who had been cultivating, farming there, was anticipated and natural.