Click to play videoMumbai: In a major embarrassment for the Rashtrapti Bhawan, President Pratibha Devisingh Patil's husband has been found guilty of appropriating a farmer's land.
A farmer from Amravati district in Maharashtra had filed a complaint against President's husband Devisingh Shekhawat for grabbing over two acres of his farm land by altering land records.
The court has now directed Shekhawat to return the land.
The farmer, Kishor Bansod, had accused Shekhawat of land grabbing, who has now been asked by the court to return the 2.25 acres of land.
"My client had lodged a complaint of land grabbing against Devisingh Shekhawat. The land comes under SC quota," said Bansod's lawyer Sunil Gujbhije.
The farmer who took the case against Shekhawat and seven others to the authorities says his land comes under the schedule caste quota.
But Shekhawat denied the charges and told CNN-IBN that Bansod was lying.
"I have been wrongly framed," said Shekhawat.
The President's Office has refused to comment on the matter, saying that the President is in no way involved with the case.
But this is not the first time that Shekhawat family has been embroiled in a land grabbing controversy.
In 2007, an educational institution owned by Pratibha Patil's family in Amravati was accused of grabbing NCC parade land in Amravati.
In Bansod's case, the farmer had filed a complaint in July 2009 that the Shekhawats had transferred 2.25 acres of his land in Chandrapur to their name with the help of the land revenue officials
But Patil's family has maintained that everything was done within the rules
President Patil's son Rajendra Shekhawat dismissed the allegations saying the land belonged to the family and that it was an error on part of the land department that measured the area
"The land case is 40 years old. Wrong measurement was done by the land officers. It is not a case of usurping anybody's land," claimed Rajendra Shekhawat.
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