In a bizarre incident, a 70-year-old man, who had supposedly grown desperate after waiting for over ten months to get the survey of his land done by revenue officials, set the files of Mulamthururthy village office in Ernakulam on fire.
The police arrested the accused Chakalaparambil Ravi, 70, of Kanjiramattam in Ernakulam in the case. The incident happened on Monday.
Ravi allegedly reached the village office in the morning just after the cleaning staff. He had allegedly brought a bottle of petrol with him and he stands accused of pouring petrol on the files and setting them on fire.
At the time, other employees of the office had not reportedly reached. Ravi allegedly fled the place after committing the crime, leaving the bottle there. Some of the employees managed to douse the fire later.
“Not all the files, but some of them kept at the office room were gutted. The building has not suffered any damage. He (Ravi) was arrested and released on bail on Monday,” Mulamthuruthy police told TNM.
The accused has been charged with 435 of IPC (Committing mischief by fire or any explosive substance intending to cause, or knowing to it to be likely that he will thereby cause, damage to any property to the amount of one hundred rupees or upwards).
However, the police is still investigating what prompted Ravi to allegedly commit the crime.
“It is not yet confirmed that he had been approaching the officers for the past ten months to conduct survey on the land,” the police added. The Youth Congress on Tuesday staged a protest in front of the village office against the laxity of the officers towards people’s issues.
According to a source, Ravi had been involved in a civil case over the land for years. “After he won the case, he had approached the revenue officials with the application to survey the land. The officials recently had surveyed the land on which his houses is built, but that time, too, they didn’t survey this particular land. They didn’t survey the land even after a court direction for the same,” the source said.
The High Court had reportedly ordered that 1.3 acres of land near the mosque in Kanjiramattom be surveyed in July 2017.