CHENNAI:Eighteen property grabbers have been arrested in the last two months, after the Chennai police received 141 land grab complaints.“It was not just the DMK functionaries. Many of those arrested in the land grabbing cases are found to be brokers who amassed wealth by grabbing land belonging to people living outside the State, far from home,” said J Chandrasekaran, Assistant Commissioner of Police, land grabbing unit, CCB.Many had made a quick buck this way. For instance, Krishnakumar and Jeyasingh earned Rs 58 lakh in a land cheating case in Sholinganallur. While Krishnakumar used his share of Rs 20 lakh to buy a swanky car, Jeyasingh invested Rs 24 lakh in a movie, Kannigapuram Sandippil.Explaining the modus operandi of the accused, a senior police officer said the brokers look for land in posh localities like Adyar, Thiruvanmiyur, East Coast Road, Sholinganallur, Valasaravakkam and Virugambakkam.The police found that land belonging to people who either work in IT firms abroad or live outside the State are easy targets. The imposters get the land registered in their names through impersonation and forged papers and immediately sell it to a third party, the officer said.In one of the cases, Riyazudeen and Mohammed Ali grabbed a piece of land in Ramavaram, belonging to Naveenbabu of Anna Nagar, who worked as a software engineer in Canada. In another case, businessman Madava Krishnamurthy had bought two-and-a-half grounds in Virugambakkam several years ago, but had settled along with his family in Gujarat. When the grabbers learnt about his background, they sold the land through forged documents to a civil engineer, Rajaram Mohanrao, for `45 lakh.Within a few days, another group approached Mohanrao and claimed ownership of the land and took away Rs 40 lakh from him. Subsequently, another person, Vembuli, claimed that he had been guarding the land for the last 10 years and demanded Rs10 lakh. Only then did Mohanrao realise that he was cheated and filed a complaint with the police.Police Commissioner J K Tripathy said the police would initiate action on land grabbers only after thorough verification of the complaint at multiple levels.
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