The building housing the SBI. (Surajit Roy)

Malda, Oct. 26: The district land department has filed a police complaint against the family members of a former Congress MP for renting out a building — constructed on a plot taken on lease from the government — to the SBI .

A case has been initiated against the family for forging government documents.

The deceased MP, Ramprassana Roy, was a member of the Rajya Sabha from 1955 to 1960.

The district land and land revenue officer, Amiya Kumar Biswas, filed the complaint against Roy’s son Pradyumna, daughters Priyanka, Tapati and Sudeshna and Sulagna and grandson Pritam with the Englishbazar police station on October 23.

Quoting records Biswas said two plots of land — 5-cottah in each plot — near the district collectorate had been given on lease to Roy’s wife Minati in 1957 and 1958 for 30 years. Minati, too, is dead.

“According to the law, land taken on lease from the government cannot be handed over to a second party. The plot, where the building housing the main branch of the bank, is recorded as the government land.”

Biswas said nearly 50 years ago the Roys had constructed the building on the plot and rented it out to the SBI. The family did not renew the lease after its expiry.

Recently, the SBI had approached the district magistrate for renovating the building to install some equipment as part of its modernisation programme. The district magistrate had asked the bank authorities to submit documents on the ownership of the land. It was then that the matter of lease came to the fore.

The district magistrate, Chittaranjan Das, has written to the SBI directing it not to pay the rent to the Roys any more. “What has been going on is illegal and it has to be stopped,” Das said.

Accordingly, the manager of the SBI’s Malda main branch, Samir Kumar Chakrabarty, instructed his officers not to pay the rent from November.

When contacted, Pradyumna Roy said he had no idea why the district authorities had raked up the matter suddenly.

“We have been paying the revenue for the land. We have also written to the department for the renewal of the lease. No one has told us that we were indulging in something illegal,” Roy said over the phone from his Delhi residence.

“We will examine the documents and take steps to arrest the accused persons,” district police chief Satyajit Bandyopadhyay said.