HC quashes 70 acres of Hebbal land acquisition 25 years later, orders CBI probe

A Congress government’s decision to acquire 70 acres of prime land in Bengaluru to help a company that did not exist at the time has come back to haunt another Congress regime 25 years later.

A division bench of the Karnataka High Court in an order Friday highlighted a series of events over the years that helped a few influential men walk away with pricey plots of farmers at Hebbal in North Bengaluru at a throwaway price. An acre of land in Hebbal costs upwards Rs 50 crore at today’s market rates.

The bench comprising Justices DK Singh and Tara Vitatsa Ganju, by a 69-page judgment, overturned the order of a single-judge bench that had upheld the land acquisition. The division bench restored the land to its earlier owners and ordered a CBI probe into the transactions.


The judgment noted that a state high-level committee on investments in 2001 used a law—the Industries (Facilitation) Act—that came into force two years later for clearing the land acquisition.

An alarming aspect was, the judges noted, an almost blank application was submitted in June 2000 and the high-level committee held a meeting just five days after the application to acquire land for them. The beneficiary company, Lakeview Tourism Corporation, first requested acquisition of 37 acres for an industrial project, but later increased it to 70 acres.

The promoters incorporated the company in January 2011, more than 10 years after applying for the land. Its memorandum of association mentioned Sushil Mantri and Snehal Mantri as promoters, instead of the original promoters. Its profit & loss account for 2022-23 showed a loss of Rs 51,611 and a negative net worth of Rs 8,60,686, according to the court order.

In the years that followed, it turned into a partnership firm of two real estate developers from being a private limited company. The industrial project never materialised. In the meanwhile, the nature of the project changed to residential.

“The learned single judge, however, lost sight of all these aspects in the matter,” the division bench said.

“The high speed and alacrity with which the government had acted to exercise its power of eminent domain to favour a non-existent entity for its business and private gain was nothing but a gross abuse of the powers by the state machinery and fraud on statute...,” it said.

It ordered the CBI to probe the matter, saying: “We cannot expect an impartial and independent investigation at the hands of the state agencies when the state instrumentally itself was involved in committing the monumental fraud.”

The bench imposed cost of Rs 10 lakh on Lakeview, to be paid to Army Battle Casualties Welfare Fund within four weeks.