Thaindian News

Bhopal, April 22 (IANS) Pradeep Kishan, film maker and husband of writer-activist Arundhati Roy, and his three friends have lost the battle for their bungalows near Bhopal after the Bhopal-Hoshangabad divisional commissioner rejected their appeal.

Commissioner Manoj Shrivastava Thursday rejected the appeals of Kishan and three others and said the bungalows owned by them in the Bariyam hamlet of Pachmarhi were “illegal”.

The Bhopal sub-divisional magistrate had earlier ruled against Kishan and his friends. They are now planning to approach the state revenue board.

The bungalow in Bariyam village in Pachmarhi, 250 km from Bhopal, stands on a 4,346 sq ft plot that the author’s husband had bought in 1994.

The bungalows of Krishna and three others - writer Vikram Seth’s sister Aradhna Seth, Jagdish Sharma and Nishikant Jadhav - have been in the centre of controversy ever since the Madhya Pradesh High Court rejected their appeal for staying the local administration’s order, which stated that the bungalows were constructed on prohibited Pachmarhi sanctuary land.

The four bungalow owners appealed before the commissioner in March.

After hearing the case Thursday, Shrivastava said the acquisition of the land was illegal under the Wildlife Protection Act 1972.

He also rejected the plea that the applicants had no knowledge about the sanctuary.

“Ignorance cannot be a plea against legal provisions,” observed Shrivastava.

Kishan and his friends are now planning to appeal to the revenue board.

“In a reply to a public interest litigation, the government had accepted in the high court that Bariyam was a revenue village,” Sushil Kumar, their lawyer, told IANS.