Daijiworld Media Network - Beltangady (SP)

Beltangady, Mar 9: An incident in which miscreants destroyed the barbed wire fencing erected around the play ground of the government higher primary school at Maladi in the taluk has come in for bitter criticism.

The said fence had been erected in the presence of the tahsildar and members of school development and monitoring committee on Thursday March 7. The fence was removed the same night. In this connection, a case stands filed in Punjalkatte police station,duly naming 15 persons as accused. All the accused are absconding now.

The 45 acres of DC Manna land at Maladi had become a bone of contention since the last two years. The playground of the school also formed part of the contested land. Dalit Sangharsh Samiti had been holding the view since long that this land should be available for the use of everyone. But during the verification of documents and measurement of land, it became clear that 1.5 acres of land belonged to othe school. Therefore, the tahsildar, Ganapati Shastri, head teacher of the school, and SDMC office bearers supervised erection of barbed wire mesh for 75 cents of land.

Some young men, said to be locals, put off the street lights at around 7.30 pm the same day, and removed the entire fence. The board set up as per the instruction of the tahsildar was also found to have been torn apart.

Shankar and Umesh have been named as main accused in the complaint relating to rooting out of the fence. In the complaint registered, Ganesh, Purandar, Vasanth, Gireesh, Shekhar, Sukesh, Yuvaraj,Padmanabha, Chikkayya, Dinesh, Naushad, Umesh and Ganesh have been named. The actual number of accused might go up as the investigation progresses. A special team lhas been formed to arrest the culprits, said in-charge police sub-inspector,Bhaskar. In the
The tahsildarsaid that a new f ence would be erected at the spot again on Saturday in his presence.