Sarangdhar Singh Chavan, Vilasrao Deshmukh

Mumbai, Dec. 16: The Supreme Court has vindicated his fight-back against a powerful moneylender and his Congress MLA son whom the then chief minister tried to protect, but Vidarbha farmer Sarangdhar Singh Chavan says the battle is not won yet.

The 50-year-old has demanded that the Maharashtra government return to the suicide belt’s farmers the plots of land taken away from them by hundreds of unlicensed, private moneylenders.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court had imposed a Rs 10-lakh fine on the state government and criticised former chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh for instructing police not to lodge criminal cases against the MLA and his father who allegedly harassed farmers for repayment.

Deshmukh, now Union heavy industries minister, today rejected Opposition demands for his resignation. “These are political things. I cannot expect anything positive from my opponents,” PTI quoted him as saying.

Chavan was among 52 farmers in Vidarbha’s Buldhana district who had lodged complaints of harassment in 2006 against Gulabchand Sananda and his sons, including MLA Dilip Sananda. Chavan says the Sanandas got 14.5 acres of his land mortgaged against the loan they gave him in 1993 and sold off 11 acres when he could not repay in time.

Yesterday, Chavan described the apex court decision as “historic” but added: “My case has come into focus, but hundreds of other cases lie buried. The government should ensure that land taken by moneylenders through exploitation are returned to farmers like me.”

Chavan had written to the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court in 2006 seeking justice. The Nagpur bench converted the letter into a writ petition (30030/2006).

Assistant police inspector Ganesh Aney of the Buldhana crime branch indirectly played a key role in the legal proceedings.

On May 31, 2006, Aney had lodged an FIR against the Sananda family under the provisions of the Money Lending Act, 1945, based on a complaint by another farmer, Rajendra Kavadkar.

However, minutes after he lodged the FIR, his superior Chandrakant Sugandi received a phone call from Ajinkya Padwal, the personal secretary of Deshmukh, Aney told The Telegraph.

“Five minutes later, Padwal called again and said the chief minister had ordered that the offence should not be investigated, and that no other offences should be lodged against Sananda. I and my superior Chandrakant Sugandi were stunned and decided to record this in the station diary,” Aney said over the phone from Amravati where he is now posted as a sub-inspector.

Next morning, Aney and then Buldhana collector Ganesh Thakur were summoned to Deshmukh’s official residence, Varsha, in Mumbai.

“During the 45-minute meeting on June 1, 2006, Deshmukh told us Sananda was the only Congress MLA from Buldhana and asked us not to proceed with investigations,” says Aney.

Deshmukh’s oral orders were conveyed by the collector to the then district superintendent of police Krishna Prakash, known as an upright officer. Prakash asked Thakur to give him written orders.

Thakur sent a letter stating Deshmukh had ordered that complaints against moneylenders should be first scrutinised by a district-level committee before criminal cases were lodged.

In July 2006, on the eve of a visit to Vidarbha by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, some newspapers published reports on Deshmukh’s orders to Aney and his superiors.

Farmer Chavan then moved the Nagpur bench, attaching to his plea copies of Thakur’s letter and Aney’s station diary. On March 5, 2009, the Nagpur bench ruled that Deshmukh’s interference in police action amounted to gross misuse of power and imposed a Rs 25,000 fine on the state government.

“The two-judge bench also directed the government to circulate the copies of their order to all ministers and their personal secretaries to ensure that no interference happens in police action against the offenders,” said Aney, who faced transfers and was kept without a posting and salary for eight months.

An embarrassed Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) government challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court. On December 14 this year, the apex court upheld the Nagpur bench decision, increased the fine from Rs 25,000 to Rs 10 lakh, and said Deshmukh’s directions to the police were “wholly unconstitutional and seek to subvert the constitutional norms of equality and social justice”.

The apex court verdict led to an uproar in the Assembly in Nagpur today. The leader of the Opposition, Eknath Khadse of the BJP, demanded a statement from the state government.

Shiv Sena leader Ramdas Kadam demanded Deshmukh’s resignation on moral grounds and said he and not the state treasury should be made to pay the fine of Rs 10 lakh.

Senior NCP leader Chhagan Bhujbal assured the House that the state government would make a statement tomorrow, the last day of the winter session of the Assembly.

Chavan, speaking over the phone from Khamgaon in Buldhana, hailed the apex court decision saying: “The judgment shows that instead of wiping the tears of the widows of Vidarbha farmers who committed suicide, the (then) chief minister was busy protecting the moneylenders. We didn’t get justice from the government, but the court gave us justice.”