Lokayukta Police to probe land scam charges against Yeddy

BANGALORE, march 24 (Agencies): A local court on Thursday postponed prosecution in a complaint filed against Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa and his family members for alleged involvement in illegal mining and land scams and ordered Lokayukta Police to probe the matter. When the first complaint out of the five filed by city-based advocates came up for orders before Additional Civil and Sessions court judge C B Hipparagi, he postponed the prosecution and referred the matter to Superintendent of Police, Lokayukta, Bangalore.
Further, the court granted six weeks time to SP Lokayukta to complete his inquiry and submit the final report to the court on the first complaint by May 4, 2011. The recording of the sworn statement in the second complaint will be done on Friday. Advocates Sirajin Basha and K N Balaraj have filed complaints against Yeddyurappa and his family members for their alleged involvement in the land and illegal mining scams. The advocates in the first complaint leveled three charges against the accused. The first pertains to denotification of agriculture land in Arkavathy Layout and its sale to Yeddyurappa’s son B Y Vijayendra and his son-in-law Sohan Kumar who in turn sold it to a private mining firm making an “unlawful gain” of Rs 19.6 crore.
The second allegation is “illegal sale” of another piece of land in the same layout to a private company, Dhavalagiri developers of which Yeddyurappa’s two sons and son-in-law are the directors, for Rs 60 lakh as against the market value of the land which was Rs 8 crore. The third charge is “illegal amalgamation” of road land and ten sites in Akravathy Layout by Yeddyurappa on an application filed by one Akkamma and others who never owned any of these sites and the sole purpose being appropriating the property for themselves.