Over the last century, Adilabad district’s tribal belt has witnessed exploitation of its poor and gullible Adivasis in the worst possible form, and the struggle of the family of late Kumra Yeshwanth Rao, a Gond farmer from Powerguda in Jainoor mandal, is a fine example of how deep-rooted the problem is. Yeshwanth Rao was first conned into clearing an 18 acre forest land by a non-tribal landowner only to be dispossessed of it within no time by being conned repeatedly by other non-tribals.
“The administration has never supported us in our effort to reclaim our lands. I was even sent to jail by the police under the influence of the non-tribal occupants,” said Kumra Govind Rao, the second son of Yeshwanth Rao, as he began to narrate his woeful tale to The Hindu .
In the early 1960s, Yeshwanth, who had a respectable income from the nearly 50 cows he had owned, was somehow convinced by a non-tribal landowner from Jendaguda to make a large clearing in the forest for cultivating it. In lieu of the protection promised from the Forest Department officials, the non-tribal claimed almost all the cows, and gold and silver jewellery of the family.
This non-tribal landowner also used his influence to secretly create revenue documents of land ownership in his own name and depicted the Gond farmer as a tenant. By 1965, the land was being tilled by a Gujarati businessman from Jainoor in lieu of the debt that Yeshwanth Rao had incurred by way of purchasing jaggery, onions, garlic and edible oil on credit.
In 1969, the Jendaguda landowner sold the land to the Jainoor businessman without the knowledge of the Adivasi. Apparently, the former had come to know of the impending implementation of the stringent AP Land Transfer Regulation Act of 1969 and the inevitable dispossession which was to follow.
The Gujarati businessman’s family migrated to Adilabad within a few years and realising that they too would not be able to keep the land. They sold it to a Banjara tribal from Hasnapur village in Utnoor mandal as late as May 2011.
The victim, meanwhile, appealed to the Special Deputy Collector for LTR cases at Utnoor and the district Collector only to be handed over possession of the piece of land for two brief periods, one of which saw the family being evicted by the police.
Meanwhile, the issue has become more complicated as all the three original players are dead. Yeshwanth Rao, the Jendaguda landowner and the Gujarati businessman are no more, and the government needs to depend upon the records of the Forest Department to arrive at a conclusion, besides invoking the provisions of the LTR Act 1 of 1970.
