In the last year-and-half, Beed has emerged as the epicentre of the agitation for Maratha reservation, leading to regular skirmishes and social boycotts between the Maratha community and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs), of which the Vanjaris are the dominant community. For three decades the political fortunes of the region have been controlled by Vanjari clan members of the late Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Gopinath Munde.

His daughter Pankaja is a BJP minister in the state cabinet while his nephew Dhananjay was a minister from Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party (NCP). Last month, the charge sheet filed in the murder of village sarpanch Santosh Deshmukh, a Maratha, details how Munde’s aide and election manager Karad maintained a stranglehold on the local economy. He cornered most work contracts for the state-run thermal power project, the fly-ash business, sand mining, and also most civil work. Karad has been the election manager for Dhananjay Munde, a two-term lawmaker from Parli who was also Beed’s guardian minister.

It’s in this context that the killing of Deshmukh became a flashpoint that eventually cost the minister his job.

Where tensions emerged

About five years ago, the Maharashtra government made a determined push towards clean energy. After land in Sangli and Satara became scarce and expensive, the hilly terrains of Kej, Ambajogai, Patoda and Sautada, rising 750 metres above sea level, were identified as ideal places to develop wind energy farms.

The Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (MEDA) confirmed Beed’s suitability for wind power projects; sites with an annual mean wind density above 200W/m2 qualify for wind energy production. “Beed has a highly windy terrain, and companies have conducted extensive research before setting up projects here,” said Sumodh Gandhele, project executive officer at MEDA, Beed.

A single windmill requires seven acres of land and costs around ₹28 crore to install, including infrastructure and machine costs. Each turbine generates 3.3 megawatts of power (a megawatt is a million units), which is sold at ₹3 per unit to Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Limited (MSEDCL). Companies, typically, sign lease agreements with farmers for 25 to 30 years.

At Beed, which is a drought-prone region, agrarian distress has led to many farmer suicides. The windmills offered both money and employment, and were initially welcomed by local residents.

In the last two years alone over 300 clean energy companies have set up windmill farms in and around Beed. Some of these include Torrent Power, JSW, Serentica Renewables, Renew Tej Shakti Pvt. Ltd, Panama Wind Energy Godawari Pvt. Ltd. The monies that have gushed into the region can be estimated by the fact that just one of them, Avaada Energy Pvt Ltd, has invested nearly ₹350 crore for their wind energy project in Beed.

However, even before the murder of the Maratha village chief, the relationship between villagers and wind companies began to fray and deals began to unravel. Typically, a middleman acting at the company’s behest would approach farmers who own the land, offer them high returns and sign contracts which would be in English and often incomprehensible to most of them — resulting in multiple fights over fine-print and unmet obligations. Village sarpanches played a key role in granting no-objection certificates (NOC) to any windmill project. In places where the villagers refused to give their land, middlemen would pay a bribe of ₹3 lakh to ₹5 lakh to get the NOC from the headman.

RTI activist Ganesh Dhawale who has been documenting alleged frauds in these land deals claims that police complicity and administrative inaction have enabled large-scale land grabs. “Farmers are being pressured to sell land at meagre rates under false assurances. Local enforcers—often linked to wind energy firms—persuade them with misleading promises of compensation and employment, but these promises are rarely honoured,” Dhawale told HT.

Dhawale recently intervened on behalf of a farmer at Sultanpur taluka who attempted self-immolation after his land was fraudulently taken over. “Instead of receiving assistance, he was taken to the police station and threatened with legal action,” said Dhawale who eventually got him released.

Across villages stories of such frauds are recounted with tragic routineness.

Failed promises, bounced cheques

Mahadeo Kadam, a farmer from Mahajanwadi recalls how he was promised a steady rental income for leasing his farmland to a wind energy company in 2023. “They (the energy firm) said they would pay me ₹30,000 annually, but not only did they fail to deliver on the promised infrastructure, they also destroyed our farm and the access road. When we demanded compensation, they threatened us with a police case. Now, they have dismantled the windmill on our land, but we have no clarity on why they did so,” said Kadam said. He said he had complained to the collector’s office but received no support.

Sachin Thombare, a farmer from Barul village, said he leased 20 gunthas of land for a windmill project but the company took over 34 gunthas instead without his consent. When he confronted them over the removal of trees on his remaining land, company officials assaulted him, he claims. “They paid me ₹3 lakh for the lease, lower than what we had discussed. When I protested, bouncers were sent to beat me,” Thombare alleged. (A guntha is a local measure of land; 40 make an acre).

Farmers from Kandighat speak of bounced cheques issued by windmill companies.

Subhash Rambhau Zodge recalls he received a ₹6 lakh cheque on June 10, 2024, which he wanted to encash for his ailing father’s treatment, but it didn’t come good. Media attention and similar stories of other villagers eventually forced the company to clear dues. The police, Zodge claims, initially refused to take his complaint seriously.

A senior police officer, speaking anonymously, admitted many victims hesitate to file complaints due to the powerful nexus between political heavyweights and criminal elements. “With crores of rupees involved in these projects, victims fear confronting organized crime groups.”

Dhawale’s RTI disclosures further reveal that wind energy companies often fail to secure proper consent from all co-owners in land transactions. In one case, a firm signed a lease with two family members despite six people having legal ownership of the land. Complaints have also emerged of public land, including irrigation department plots, being encroached upon for windmill installations without authorisation.

However, after the killing of Santosh Deshmukh and the subsequent outrage, Maharashtra’s director general of police wrote to Beed superintendent Navneet Kanwat for details of complaints filed against wind energy companies. In the last few weeks, the police have filed four FIRs, said Kanwat.

“Some of the FIRs are related to physical assault of farmers while some are related to extortion,” he added. These are separate from the 12 complaints filed by villagers with the Beed collector. In some cases these are about wind energy firms exploiting legal loopholes to manipulate landowners into parting with their property under false pretences. Some complainants say they signed contracts without fully understanding them as they were drafted in English. Others complaints seen by HT allege that lease agreements were signed with one set of family members while bypassing other co-owners, leading to bitter family disputes.

Beed district collector Avinash Pathak said, “We will provide all necessary help and co-operation to protect the rights of farmers. Also, action will be initiated at places where the complaints have been lodged.”

Cleaning up the mess

But any government action is too late for the village of Massajog. Late last year, when Avaada was setting up a project at Kej village, they received a demand for ₹2 crore from Walmik Karad, according to the police charge sheet against him. When the company prevaricated, Karad’s men landed up at the windmill farm site and assaulted the security guard who was from Massajog. The guard, instead of calling the police who had looked the other way in the past, sought the intervention of his village headman Santosh Deshmukh.

Relations between the Marathas and the OBCs had already strained to the point of social boycott between the two communities during last year’s general elections and when Deshmukh reached the site with his men to protect the security guard, heated words served as flame to gunpowder. In the video recorded by his assailants, Deshmukh can be seen getting punched, kicked and beaten with pipes that lay on the site. As he lay bloodied on the ground, his assaulters also filmed one of them urinating on him.

These incendiary images eventually forced chief minister Devendra Fadnavis to ask Dhananjay Munde to step down even though the latter himself tweeted asking for Karad to be punished.

Activist Dhawale says, these are initial steps in cleaning up the mess in Beed. “There has to be a complete investigation into how farmers are being shortchanged in land deals. Wind energy companies must be held accountable for their actions, just like any other commercial entity,” he said. “We are already seeing farmer suicides due to farm distress. If these malpractices continue, the crisis will only escalate.”