Farmers staged a protest, along with a farmer's body Kali Aai Mukti Sangram, in Ahmednagar's Khandala village on Saturday 'as a symbol to show their ownership' of the land which they allege was acquired from them by businessman Nirav Modi at undervalued rates.
"Nirav Modi had acquired land of the farmers by conning them. We did this (protest) as a symbol to show our ownership of the land. He was given crores by the bank but farmers are not given more than Rs 10,000. We have started a 'Bhoomi Aandolan' against this," one of the protesters told ANI.
Accusing Modi of exploiting farmer's financial issues to make them accept an unreasonable price, another protester said, "Nirav Modi is not only an absconder, he is also a land mafia. He thieved around 250 acres of land in Khandala village, paying a meager 10,000-15,000 INR for land valued at 20 lakhs per acre."
Nirav Modi is the main accused in the USD 1.8 billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, which started in 2011 and was detected in the third week of January this year, after which the PNB officials reported it to the concerned agencies.