DMK leader held on land grab charge

Aug 31, 2011 |

IANS

chennai

Tags:

Ponmudi

DMK leader and former higher education minister K. Ponmudi was arrested on Wednesday on land grab charges, police said.

A police officer in Villupuram district told the media that land was allotted to a housing colony, children's park and community hall for the employees of the state transport corporation.

The land allotted for children's park and community hall was tendered out without proper authorisation and the Siga Educational Trust, belonging to Ponmudi, took over the land.

AIADMK's trade union wing leader Narayanasmy lodged a complaint of land grab and Ponmudi was arrested from his Villupuram home.

Meanwhile, tension prevailed in Villupuram with several DMK cadres assembling outside Ponmudi's residence when police came to arrest him.

While being escorted by the police, Ponmudi told reporters that the AIADMK government is foisting a case on him and he would face it legally.

Ponmudi is the fourth DMK minister to be arrested in land grab charges after AIADMK came to power in May. The others are Veerapandi S. Arumugam in Salem, K.N. Nehru in Tiruchirapalli and N.K.K.P. Raja in Erode.

The police have also arrested DMK legislator J. Anbazhagan and former legislator B. Ranganathan on similar charges.

The police also arrested DMK legislator Anita Radhakrishnan on August 10 in an assault case.

On August 24, Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa in the state assembly said that the government had restored land valued at over Rs.415 crore to their owners.

Of 8,947 land grab complaints, she said, charge sheets were filed in three cases while 462 cases were booked. At least 419 people have been arrested.

The government has set up 25 special courts and fast track courts to hear the land grab cases, she added.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/93588" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-18499e22667d92efb7ec0b507bfc1384" value="form-18499e22667d92efb7ec0b507bfc1384" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="87323693" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>