Muhammad Yasin, in his 50s, lives in a one-marla, triple-storey house with his three sons and their families. The families earn their livelihood through small jobs and daily wages. They are part of a 45-house community in a three-kanal piece of land known as Ahata Thanidaran -- an old compound, historically attributed to a police inspector. They have inhabited the land since Partition.

It was a legal dispute on Yasin’s small house that recently forced him to take his nine-month old baby Muhammad Musa to the court for an interim bail in a case lodged by the local police. The incident got international attention as the police nominated the child in a report, accusing him of a murder attempt and attack on policemen on January 31, 2013.

Yasin’s grandson, Muhammad Musa, a nine-month-old, was nominated in the First Information Report (FIR) after the people of the compound protested against (alleged) police vandalism.

"Some local influential wants to grab the land and the matter is in the court," Yasin said. "A few months ago, the rival party, through court, managed to cut the gas supply of the slum by removing gas meters. Following that, on February 1, the police came to disconnect their gas supply without any official notice in hand.

"There were only women in the houses at that time," said Yasin. Later, when the men came home in the evening they staged a protest. "We blocked the road and raised slogans against the police. Senior police officials assured us that they would look into the matter. Next day, we came to know the police had lodged a case against a number of people in the locality, not even sparing the nine-month-old Musa."

He said they could not believe it. But later, when the police started raiding their houses, they had to move the court for interim bail.

The police lodged the case against as many as 30 people on behalf of Assistant Sub Inspector Kashif who alleged that the slum people had attacked the police and pelted stones at them, said Irfan Sadiq Tarar, the counsel of the child.

He said the police had nominated five people in the FIR as identified and the rest as unidentified. Musa was among the identified.

He said according to the Pakistan Penal Code Section 82, no action of a child younger than seven can be considered an offence.

The disputed compound, mostly comprising one-room houses, in narrow streets, is situated along the Canal Road in Muslim Town. More than 250 people have been living in these houses for decades, Yasin told TNS.

He said the police was putting pressure on the slum people and their families to manipulate the case.

The locality has been without electricity for the past one year, revealed Muhammad Imran, another resident of the compound.

The place has a cultural history as prominent film stars have lived here. Yasin remembers that Santosh Kumar lived next to the compound. Besides, there were houses of Lollywood icons such as Sudheer, Talish, S. Suleman and Rani.

"The disputed compound was a stable in 1947 when our forefathers migrated from different parts of India and stayed at Walton camp," Yasin said. "At that time, an army colonel asked a police inspector to arrange accommodation for the 45 families and he put us up. Since then the area is called as ‘Ahata Thanidaran’."

At that time, there was only the Syeds (forefathers of singer Tahira Syed) who lived in the area; they moved out later. In 1962, the government acquired this piece of land. In the 1980s, a family from Mansehra that had been based in Gwalmandi, Lahore, suddenly claimed that the land was given to them as a ‘gift’.

Yasin said the electricity in these houses had been disconnected for the past one year after the family who claimed the ownership managed to get a decree from the court which was now being challenged.

"They are putting pressure on us to vacate the land while the documents they presented in the court are bogus," he said. "We demand the government to look into the case and give the ownership of these small houses to the poor families and restore our utility connections."

On January 31 this year, the police tried to disconnect the gas meters of the compound, despite resistance shown by the women of the families. "They have removed the electricity connections already. There is no water supply either. They want to kill us but we shall not move back," Imran said.

"We have got nothing after migrating from India except these one-room houses and the land grabbers want to snatch these too," he said. "Our only crime is that we are poor and without any support."