Man claims buying land on moon

Kolkata: It may sound strange, but a person in Kolkata has purchased properties in moon and claims to posses 'valid documents' of his investments.

Anish Dasgupta, who is a travel consultant, stumbled upon a website, www.lunarrepublic.com, which claims to be the "Official website of moon" and bought two acres of land in the moon through this organisation using his credit cards.

He paid Rs 4,600 along with the registration charges.

Dasgupta resides in a small government flat in Howrah along with his father and is happy with his purchase.

"It is fascinating to acquire land on moon. Don't you agree?" he quips.

When he bought the lunar land, Dasgupta did not inform his family and took it for granted that he may have been duped.

But he was overjoyed when he received all documents of his land along with blue print of the land description.

The location of his land in the moon is tract 34, latitude 13.5-degree south and Longitude 47.5-degree west.

Dasgupta informs that his piece of land is just four kilometres away from Oceanus Procellarum or the "Ocean of the Storms".

When enquired about the veracity of the "Lunar Republic" which is selling the lunar land, Dasgupta casts no doubts on it and justifies his act saying, "Bill Gates and many others big personalities have already bought land in the moon and they are also lunar citizens like me".

The Lunar Republic Society claims to be founded on July 20, 1999 with the aim "of returning to the Moon in order to establish permanent bases - for scientific research, tourism and manufacturing - without using government funding".

Claiming to already have sold the lunar plots to eight lakh people whom it refers to as 'citizen partners', the Lunar Republic Society also claims to allot only 135-million acres of lunar land out of the approximately nine-billion acres entire moon surface and premium tracts in the Sea Of Tranquility, Bay Of Rainbows, Sea Of Serenity, Lunar Alps and Lake Of Dreams.

The organisation has also designed a lunar national flag and all members have voting rights.

Anish Dasgupta firmly believes that in future it would be possible for a common man to go to the moon by a space shuttle.

He also dreams that a day will come when he will be fortunate enough to visit his piece of land in the moon.