Nagpur: MIHAN’s SEZ area is finally seeing a lot of action and ‘industry’. But it not quite the kind that was planned for, anticipated or will be appreciated.
Because the fact is that it is ‘robbery’ that is thriving here by night and the culprits are getting more and more fearless and ambitious.
They began with stealing light fittings and some small equipment and have ‘graduated’ to uprooting and doing away with an entire light pole that was designed artistically to match ‘London street poles’.
MIHAN lies over 1500 hectares of area with lots of main roads criss- crossing it. There is a compound wall built around, but with many villages surrounding it, and using these roads to communicate with each other, sealing off the area after office hours is not possible.
The villages that lie in the periphery of the SEZ are : Telhara, Kalkaahi, Dahegaon and Khapri.
As Atul Thakre, Manager Marketing of MIHAN put it, ” till all the PAPs ( project affected people) are not rehabilitated, we cannot seal the roads and the boundaries of the villages. Some lands that are acquired on paper have not been taken possession of yet, so we have to allow them access.”
The law and order problem is compounded since many of the MIHAN projects are yet to come up and lands are lying vacant. It is easy for miscreants to get away.
As of now 119 private security guards are deployed here by MADC at a annual cost of Rs. 3 crores but they are not sufficient to guard such a huge area.
MIHAN personnel had a meeting with DCP Nirmala Devi and she has promised to look into this issue and see that police are deployed here in larger numbers. There is a police station built in the area, but not yet manned.
.. Divyesh Dwivedi and Sunita Mudliyar
