With Special Investigation Team (SIT), Garhwal Range, tasked with addressing land fraud-related complaints, going energetically for reconciliation between the complainants and the alleged fraudsters, the objective behind the constitution of the force is being defeated, runs the critical refrain.
It is alleged that SIT being empowered to take punitive action against the fraudsters following investigation, the latter are being let off with understanding being struck between them and their victims at the behest of the officials manning SIT. Many aver that exchange of money might be behind the across the table reconciliation being resorted to.
Critics opine that even Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat’s strict direction to the officers concerned soon after assuming charge to ruthlessly clamp down on the land mafia seems to have failed to make them desist from brokering compromise understanding, an euphemism for letting the mafia off the hook of law.
Critics further say that the purpose behind setting up SITs is not being met with the police officers having turned into middlemen to reconcile the complainants to those who have duped them of hard-earned money through fraudulent land deals. “The police top brass must unearth things as charges of money playing roles in the incidence of reconciliation are being raised frequently,” said one of them.
Another invoked the IG Sanjay Kumar Gunjyal who had earlier made it clear that SIT would not be allowed to be reduced to an instrument of brokering compromise between the land mafias and the victims.