PUNE: A retired engineer, who lives in the lane near Kamla Nehru Park close to Deccan Gymkhana , has approached the police with a complaint application claiming that some portion of the nine-metre wide public road in front of his house has been “stolen”.The engineer had filed an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act with the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) six months ago seeking details about the road and the plan of a building constructed a few years ago. The civic body, in its reply last month, said it was a nine-metre wide road.But Sumatilal Mishrilal Kankariya (62) of Bhandarkar Road decided to measure the width of the road with a tape and found out it was just six metres wide.“As mentioned by the PMC, the road should have been nine metres wide. This road, joining Kamla Nehru Park and other internal roads , located near Joshi Hospital is about 300m in length. For its entire length, the road is six metres and not nine metres wide as mentioned by the PMC in the documents,” Kankariya said.He has submitted a complaint application to the police and sought a probe. “A three-metre portion of land has been stolen. Somebody may have grabbed it or there could be misleading documents with the PMC. It needs verification,” he said.The Deccan Gymkhana police, who heard the engineer and examined his complaint, have told him to approach the civic body. They did not register a First Information Report The retired man got curious about the road when a minor argument over parking broke out. “I live on the same road. Sometimes, visitors park here and the watchman from the neighbouring building stops them. I argued with the watchman but he is a poor man acting on the directions of his employers. Since it caused regular trouble for the people, I decided to use the RTI,” Kankariya said.In its reply, the PMC gave him the plan and the road width map (a copy of the blue print dated October 8, 2012 is with TOI). “The map clearly indicates that the width of the road is nine metres,” he said.Kankariya said he has also studied many other documents and realized that the road has been in the land records since 1940. “It has always been six metres wide. I don’t know when and how its width changed on the documents,” he said.

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