Villagers gather at the site of the killings

VARANASI: Five days after the Sonbhadra massacre , the three-member panel set up by UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath to probe the circumstances that led to the transfer of the gram sabha land, has hit a major hurdle after crucial documents dating back to 1955 were found missing from the district revenue office. The district magistrate, too, confirmed to TOI the papers were “untraceable”.

The panel led by additional chief secretary (revenue) had a specific brief to investigate how gram sabha land in the three villages of Ubha, Sapai and Murtiya in the Sonbhadra district was transferred to a society and then taken over by the village head.

Advocate Nityanand Dwivedi, who is fighting a legal battle for Gond tribals of the three villages in the lower court, told TOI that after abolition of the zamindari system, 600 bigha of land that belonged to the Raja of Badhaar, Anand Bhramh Saha, was marked barren (infertile) in revenue records and transferred as gram sabha land to be tilled by Gond tribals.

In 1952, IAS officer Prabhat Kumar Mishra was posted in Mirzapur. He formed a society, Adarsh Cooperative Society Ltd, and appointed his fatherin-law, Maheshwari Prasad Sinha of Muzaffarpur in Bihar, as its president and his daughter and wife Asha Mishra office-bearers. On December 17, 1955, at least 463 bigha was transferred in the name of the society. This paper is missing.

Till Sinha’s death, land was registered in his name. On September 6, 1989, 200 bigha was transferred to Sinha’s daughter, Asha Mishra, and grand-daughter Vinita, who sold off 144 bigha for Rs 2 crore to Yagya Dutt Gujjar, the village head.

Sonbhadra DM Ankit Agarwal, told TOI, “We have all relevant papers, barring the 1955 file”. He also said the file was not submitted in revenue records of Sonbhadra, which was carved out of Mirzapur in 1989.



In Video: Sonbhadra carnage: Crucial land papers of 1955 missing