Hattu Singh, a 55-year-old Buxa peasant, remembers that his grandfather Baldev Singh was the pradhan of the village and he owned around 30 acres. The land was distributed among Hattu and his cousins. But slowly all of them lost their land to a Sikh farmer who now has a huge walled house. In a bid to get his land back from the farmer, Hattu's cousin Chet Ram filed a case in court over four acres and won. The irony is that despite a favo-urable verdict, he could not occupy the land. "We won the case, but our elders were afraid to take the land into possession. Who will fight the farmers? They are powerful people after all," says Hattu.