close
Friday March 29, 2024

FIA books six for transferring multi-billion 984-acre land

LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Lahore has registered an FIR against six revenue officers of Okara including naib tehsildars and kanongo for transferring multi-billion 984 acres agriculture land of Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) to a private person allegedly illegally, The News learnt.The ETPB land is located at Mauza

By our correspondents
August 29, 2015
LAHORE: The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) Lahore has registered an FIR against six revenue officers of Okara including naib tehsildars and kanongo for transferring multi-billion 984 acres agriculture land of Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) to a private person allegedly illegally, The News learnt.
The ETPB land is located at Mauza Ram Parshad, tehsil Depalpur, district Okara. The revenue officers allegedly illegally transferred 984 acres of agriculture land of the trust to one Munawar Hussain who further sold it to 18 other persons.
According to sources, after holding an inquiry into the issue, the FIA registered an FIR No 131/2015 against Muhammad Hussain, Patwari, Muhammad Akram, Kanongo, Najam Hafeez and Rana Riaz, Naib Tehsildars, Sohail Iqbal, Data Entry Operator and Munawar Hussain. It is stated in the FIR that the role of concerned Assistant Commissioner Asif Rauf Khan and buyers of the property will be determined during further investigations.
On Thursday, a team of the FIA led by Assistant Director Mian Sabir, SHO Nayyar Tirmizi and Inspector Javed Sultan arrested one accused Rana Riaz, Naib tehsildar. They also obtained his four-day physical remand.
Original record pertaining to transfer of land has also been seized. The FIA authorities have also written DCO Okara to stop further transfer of the said land.
According to the FIR and the documents in possession of The News, before the partition, the property located in Mauza Parshad called Udassi Shrine Trust property was being run by a Guru, Mahant, and before the partition, the last guru was Mahant Munur Das.
As he did not migrate to India in 1947, he converted to Islam and adopted Ghulam Rasool as his new name. Ghulam Rasool contracted a marriage with Noor Bibi and they have a boy Munawar Hussain.
When Ghulam Rasool died in 1951, his widow and son filed a property claim but in 1954, the then Collector of Montgomery (now Sahiwal) declared the property as Trust Evacuee property. The Udassi Shrine Trust was looking after the affairs of the land till 12-04-1969, when Custodian of the revenue formally transferred the property in favour of the trust.
After Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) was formed in 1975, then chairman of the board declared property of Udassi Shrine Trust as ETPB’s property on April 7, 1977. Munawar and his mother Noor challenged the decision through a petition before the federal secretary, religious affairs which he dismissed on February 15, 1986. The claimants filed a review petition with the federal secretary in 1986. The federal secretary again dismissed the petition on May 29, 1993.
Munawar and Noor challenged the secretary’s decision through a writ petition 144-R/94. The LHC in its order of March 31, 2003 referred the matter back to the federal secretary.
Meanwhile, the ETPB challenged the LHC decision before the Supreme Court which ordered the federal secretary on April 27, 2010 to decide the case within two months. The federal secretary on July 27, 2012 referred the case to chairman ETPB to decide the case on merit, impugning the order of ETPB then chairman dated April 7, 1977. The matter is still pending with ETPB chairman and the next date of hearing is September 8, 2105. The same matter is also pending in some other courts as well.
In the meantime, as the matter hasn’t been decided by the board chairman, the revenue officers of Dipalpur allegedly fraudulently transferred the land in the name of Munawar Hussain in June 2014. The land was further sold out to some other persons.
It was also revealed through documents that all the transfer record of revenue department related to the said land was tampered. Documents show, revenue officers wrote on the transfer documents of the revenue record that the said matter was not pending in any court nor any court granted stay order on the same.
The Board of Revenue Punjab had issued a notification on June 6, 2014 informing Sahiwal commissioner, that from June 14, 2014 computerized edition of record of rights for 17 revenue states of Tehsil Depalpur would commence. Ram Parshad was among those revenue states.
Interestingly, the tampering was made exactly before the commencement of computerization of land record in Depalpur in 2014.
When contacted, DCO Okara Qaiser Saleem said they have handed over all the relevant revenue records to the FIA investigators. He said district administration of Okara would facilitate the FIA as much as could be possible nabbing all the culprits in the case.
Similarly, Munawar Hussain had also written an application to AC Depalpur on May 19, 2015 that concerned revenue staff has transferred the property, in question, to different unknown persons for the purpose of embezzlement and the same should be stopped and cancelled. He also demanded actions against accused revenue officers of Depalpur. He had written this application to AC at a time when the FIA has already initiated an inquiry into the case. When contacted, ETPB Chairman Siddiq-ul-Farooq refused to comment as the matter is in pending in court.