Land mafia benefitted from Parveen Rehman’s murder, JIT tells SC

ISLAMABAD: A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) probing the killing of Orangi Pilot Project Director Parveen Rehman has termed the land mafia as the "clearest beneficiaries" of the prominent social activist's murder in Karachi's Orangi Town in 2013.

In a report submitted to the Supreme Court, members of the JIT said Parveen Rehman and her organisation made it "more difficult to grab the land" by documenting informal settlements in Karachi's downtrodden outskirts. The JIT said there were three theories behind a possible wider motive to the murder; that it was either the work of the Pakistani Taliban or other Jihadi elements, who were opposed to Ms. Rehman and the OPP’s progressive vision on an ideological basis; second, that her killing was retribution for her exposing the work of the water and hydrant mafia; or lastly, organised crime groups involved in land grabbing in the city, had Ms. Rehman killed because her support of and efforts to help Goth residents to secure their land rights, had interfered with the criminal enterprise of these groups.

"The root cause of Ms. Rehman's murder had to lie with her efforts to make it more difficult to grab the land populated by the Goth dwellers," members of the JIT wrote in the report. “In the case of Ms. Rehman's murder, the clearest beneficiaries are the land mafias. Because following her murder, the OPP's work of documenting the goths and helping them attain their right to the land, stopped almost immediately," they added. "Thus it was the land mafia elements that became the direct beneficiaries of the murder of Parveen Rehman."

Parveen Rehman was gunned down by four men in a targeted attack near the Banaras Flyover in Orangi Town in March 2013. She was a vocal activist working against the and and water mafia in the city. The Police had arrested the prime suspect in the case, Rahim Swati, on May 7, 2016, during a shootout in Sultanabad. The eight-member JIT was formed in February 2018 at the request of the Inspector General Sindh AD Khawaja. The JIT included officials of the Federal Investigation Agency, Rangers and intelligence agencies. The report stated that those who tried to continue Parveen Rehman's work were coerced and threatened into submission.

"The Orangi Pilot Project's work of documenting the goths and helping them to attain their land rights, stopped almost immediately. Some efforts were made to try and continue Ms. Rehman's work, but several other members of the OPP started receiving constant threats and in at least one incident, a cracker or grenade was thrown at a senior member of the OPP. The result was that the OPP suspended its operations working with the goths, and those operations have not been reopened till the present day," the JIT members noted in the report.

“With the suspension of the OPP's work, the entire process of regularising and recognising the goths that Ms. Rehman had initiated came to a standstill, and the dwellers of the goths were left once again at the mercy of the land grabbers.

Thus it was the land mafia that became the direct beneficiary of the murder of Parveen Rehman," it said. The JIT team called the murder suspects, Raheem Swati and his associates' as 'small time gangsters who suited their (land mafia)'s purpose'.

"Their activities remained the same, involvement in various criminal activities, including land grabbing. They may well have had a localised dispute with the OPP over the establishment of a karate club.

But the elements of the land mafia would have been aware of this, and would have almost certainly been in contact with such characters." The JIT team also alleged that the investigation officer of the case, and Sub-Inspector Moeed changed the direction of the investigations by putting the blame of murder on Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.

The JIT said they had ruled out the Taliban involvement on an ideological basis. However, there was a possibility that the Jihadi elements acting on their own and out of self-interest (due to their involvement in land grabbing), may have been involved in the murder.