Twenty-nine writ petitions claiming ownership of the 2,400 acres of forest land in Mahavir Harina Vanasthali National Park at Mansoorabad village of Saroornagar Mandal have been disposed of by the High Court in favour of the Forest department, a press note from the department informed.
The writ petitions were filed successively since last year by 1,500 persons, allegedly by miscreants, intending to grab the land high in real estate value.
The park was established in 1994 on 4,000 acres and no claims were received by the then collector during the process of it being declared a national park. A compound wall was also built around it in 1996. All of a sudden, the claimants — initially a single man and later under multiple names — began filing the petitions claiming the land to be ancestral jagir. The place where the park is located was once private ground of the Asafjahi rulers, donated by the last Nizam.
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