Amitabh Bachchan likely to be prosecuted in for forgery

7 June, 2007:

Reports suggest that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati is keen on taking legal action against Bollywood actor Amitabh Bachchan, whom a court has found guilty of buying farmland in Uttar Pradesh through fraud.

It is said that the actor resorted to forgery in order to get ‘farmer status’ in Uttar Pradesh so that he can keep his land in Maharashtra where only farmers are allowed to buy farmland. Incidentally, Bachchan is friend to Amar Singh, leader of the Samajwadi Party, and also to Anil Ambani, who heads the Reliance group.

Senior officials of Uttar Pradesh have said the state might prosecute Bachchan for furnishing false documents, but would wait till the present case is finally settled in the court. Bachchan’s counsel has indicated filing an appeal in the Allahabad High Court.

Mayawati is moving against all the officials involved in allegedly forging records for the benefit of Amitabh Bachchan.

She has already issued a directive to file criminal cases against at least five officials – district magistrate downwards – involved in the episode.

Amitabh Bachchan, the court found, got himself certified as a farmer through forgery and bought farmland in Uttar Pradesh so that he could hold on to a 24-acre plot he had bought near Lonavla in Pune, Maharashtra, in the mid-1990s.

He had started building a farmhouse in Lonavla. In 2006, Bachchan produced before the Pune district authorities a certificate from the district magistrate of Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, saying that was a farmer because he owned farmland in Barabanki district.

Now the additional commissioner (administration) of Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, has ruled that the Barabanki land transfer in 1993 in Bachchan’s name was illegal.

The blow to Bachchan comes at a time when the Mayawati government is reported to be looking for ways to act against friends of the Mulayam Singh Yadav, previous chief minister, who is close to Bachchan.