BHOPAL, India, 28 June 2006 — The husband of Booker Prize winner and social activist Arundhati Roy has been charged with land grab. Pradip Krishen, the filmmaker husband of Roy, and three others have been issued show-cause notices by a tehsildar’s court in Pipariya subdivision in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh for encroaching on tribal land.

The notices were issued after Vijay Singh, a tribal resident of Bariaam village near Panchmarhi where Roy’s husband owns a house, complained that Krishen and others constructed a path leading to their houses on his land. The bungalow owned by Krishen in the hill resort of Panchmarhi, 250 km southeast of Bhopal, is at the center of a row for the second time in three years.

The chief administrator of Hoshangabad, Faiz Ahmed Kidwai, said the respondents had been asked to remove the encroachments by July 7, failing which the district administration will move in to dismantle them.

Krishen, writer Vikram Seth’s sister Aradhna Seth, retired forest official Nishikant Jadhav and Dr. J.C. Sharma are in the center of another controversy emanating from a public interest litigation filed in the Madhya Pradesh High Court at Jabalpur by a retired Indian Air Force officer. After Krishen bought the 4,346 sq. ft plot in 1994, the Madhya Pradesh government filed a suit arguing that the Forest Act of 1972 banned the sale of land in notified forest areas.

The petition questions the revenue and forest departments for allowing construction of the houses in Bariaam village, which is located within the Panchmarhi sanctuary. Sale or purchase of land is suspended immediately after an area is notified as a sanctuary or national park. The petition alleges that the construction of the houses in Bariaam commenced after the area was notified as a sanctuary. The issue is pending in the court.