When the incident of a plantation owner voluntarily giving back around 69.12 acres encroached land in Koppa is still in news, one more farmer of Menasukudige near here has handed over about 28 acres of land to the forest department on his own.

One Mr M R Balachandra Gowda had grown coffee, pepper and areca in about 28 acre and 32 guntas land under survey number 127/5 from the past many years.

However, the land was encroached one. The Forest department had filed a case against him in the court.

The case had entered State High Court recently, and the officials of the Forest department had secured order in their favour. Koppa range conservator of forests B P Ravi, Kalasa sub-division Assistant Conservator of Forests Chandre Gowda came forward to acquire the encroached land by convincing Mr Balachandra Gowda.

Responding positively to the proposal, Mr Gowda agreed to vacate the land. Led by range forest officer H R Subrahmanya, over 25 personnel started acquiring the land from the morning on Thursday and fell down thousands of areca trees and coffee plants.

Forest officials said Mr Gowda had agreed to vacate the houses built for labourers in the encroached land at the earliest.

The operation will continue for five days and the encroacher has been showing good co-operation, said Mr Subrahmanya.

Later he told Deccan Herald that varieties of plants including 4,000 cane plants will be planted in the area in the coming days. The area will become a natural forest in the next four years, he added.