“18. As per Section 2 (d) of the Assam Land Grabbing (Prohibition) Act, 2010, land grabber is defined as a person, who occupies the land by illegal means as indicated in clause (d) and clause (e) of Section 2 of the Act, over which he/they has/have no ownership, title or physical possession and includes any person, who helps financially or otherwise in grabbing the land. Thus, from the expression appearing in the definition of “land grabber”, a person or persons, can be said to have grabbed a land, over which he/they has/have no “ownership”, “title” or “physical possession”. Therefore, one must bear in mind the connotation of the expressions “title”, “ownership” and “physical possession. A land grabber must be one, who must not have title or ownership or physical possession over the land. The disjunctive ‘or’ in between ownership, title and physical possession clearly demonstrates, that if a person has title or ownership or physical possession over the land, he cannot be a grabber of the said land. A person may not have title or ownership, but if he has been in settled physical possession of a land for a long time and the possession is not obtained by any illegal means, he cannot be dubbed as land grabber, because in order to constitute “land grabbing” as defined in section 2(e) of the Land Grabbing Act, as transparent from the expression “without any lawful entitlement and with a view to illegally taking possession etc” there must be criminal intention. Dehors criminal intention mere unauthorised possession may not come with the definition of “land grabbing”, although, there may be a civil dispute over title or possession.
