Junior Vikatan’s Mr. Kazhugu (Mr. Eagle) column of 30 September 2026 has put the 2013 Tiruvallur college land sale into mainstream Tamil print and says the complaint has now gone up to the Chief Minister.
What Mr. Kazhugu Said
A minority family donated eight acres in Tiruvallur in 2013 so a minority education group could build a college. Power of attorney was given to a real estate operator. The land was plotted and sold.
When the issue blew up under the last DMK government, a senior in the education group said he had studied with the Chinnavar, widely understood as a reference to DMK heir Udhayanidhi Stalin, son of then Chief Minister MK Stalin, and that no one could touch them.
After the change of government, a panchayat was held before a minority community elder. The senior still did not admit the lapse or act. Through community elders, the column says, the matter has gone as a complaint to the Chief Minister.
The Case In Brief
In 2013, a family gifted about eight acres at Pannur to the Salesian Chennai Province for a rural engineering college. A foundation stone was laid. Within weeks, the land was placed under a private builder’s power of attorney and sold in plots for about ₹14 crore. The college was never built. The family says it learnt of the sale documents only in 2024.
Fr. Don Bosco, named in complaints over those 2013 papers, is now Provincial of the Chennai Salesian Province. A 2022 settlement mediated by the Archbishop of Madras Mylapore, under which the Province agreed to return equivalent land, was later dropped. Catholic Minority Welfare Society has since taken the sale deeds to Rome and asked for a Congregational enquiry.
SNAP published the Pannur Dossier
Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the world’s oldest clergy abuse watchdog, even carried this story on its website. In February 2026 it published the donor family’s demand for a Congregational enquiry into the Pannur land sale, naming former Salesian Provincials and the Rector of Don Bosco Egmore. The family had already sent that dossier to the Rector Major in Rome. SNAP reported it.
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