Former DMK minister's secy held for land grabbing

In the continuing crackdown by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government on land grabbing, the personal assistant of former Dravida Munnetra Kazhaga minister Pongalur N Palanisamy and a DMK general council member were among four people arrested on Friday on charges of land grabbing at Chettipalayam area on the city's outskirts.

The arrests followed a complaint from one Gunasekaran of Peramanallur near Tirupur that the PA Nagaraj, DMK General Council member Pasupati and two others had grabbed one and half acres of land belonging to him in Perur Chettipalayam, worth over Rs one crore, by forging documents.

Based on the complaint, Nagaraj, Pasupati, Meenkadai Siva, who had been recently released on bail for another land grabbing case and real estate broker Venugopal were arrested, police said.

All of them were produced before Judicial Magistrate Satyamurthy, who remanded them to 15 days judicial custody.

Several DMK leaders, including former Tamil Nadu ministers N K K P Raja and Veerapandi Arumugam have been arrested on land grabbing charges.

The state government has formed a special cell to exclusively deal with land grabbing cases.

Party president M Karunanidhi has termed the arrests as 'vendetta politics', but Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has denied the allegations, saying the special police cells were acting on "genuine" complaints by "affected" persons with no political links.