The Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau (VACB) on Tuesday requested the District Collector to stop all mining activities at Mookkunnimala immediately.
Superintendent of Police (SP) E. Sherifudeen, on the direction of VACB Director Vinson M. Paul, informed the Collector that a criminal investigation was on into the protracted fraud and corruption in the illegal conversion of government land, assigned for rubber cultivation, into granite quarries in the once-scenic hill, now denuded by years of industrial-level mining.
Illegal mining
The illegal mining continued unabated, and thus, the loss to the government and pecuniary advantage to the mining firms were mounting, the VACB communication reportedly said.
The agency also demanded immediate suspension of five officials named accused in the graft case along with several others.
Land assignment
The government had assigned much of the hilly terrain as small holdings to farmers for growing rubber in the early 1960s.
The assignment rules specified that the land could be used for no other purpose than the stated one. Mutation of land, if at all, should be with the concurrence of the District Collector. However, influential miners, over the years, bought the land from farmers for a pittance, clubbed the properties together, procured mining permits on the sly, and systematically denuded the vegetation and top soil to extract granite; thus causing irreversible damage to the environment and consequent loss to the government.
The local population, an estimated 2,500 comprising 300 families, had been on the warpath against the miners and their official collaborators for several years.
They blamed them for their despoiled neighbourhood, the pollution, incessant movement of dumper trucks that imperilled civilian traffic and the blasting that rendered many of their homes unstable. The mining had brought no reciprocal benefits to the local community and had served only to enrich a few, sources said.
