This land is my land: Anti-encroachment operation aborted

Pir Bakhsh Goth residents, shop owners burn tyres, pelt Rangers with stones.

KARACHI: On the Supreme Court’s orders, the anti-encroachment cell, the Gulberg and Liaquatabad police and city district government, Karachi, were ready with bulldozers and equipment to remove encroachments in Gharibabad on Monday. However, they were stumped when they saw trucks loaded with sand and gravel blocking their entrance into the targeted Pir Bakhsh Goth.

Residents, including women and children, and shopkeepers protested against the anti-encroachment operation and some of them burnt tyres to make the message clear. They also pelted Rangers personnel with stones, forcing them to retreat.

Law-enforcement agencies, city government staff along with senior civil judge Ahsan Durrani, who was supposed to supervise the operation, waited for hours to get started - they had arrived at the site at 9 am. The encroachments include squatter settlements and an entire furniture market.

Revenue DO Shaukat Jokhio said 2,739 square yards was to be cleared of encroachments, which is the property of Ahmed Hashmi. Hashmi has been fighting the case for this land for the last 30 years and in June 2010, the Supreme Court had declared the land his property and ordered an anti-encroachment drive.

However, when the decision was not implemented, the apex court on January 11 gave a seven-day deadline for the encroachments to be removed from Hashmi’s land.

The ‘encroaching’ furniture shop owners also offered Hashmi an alternate piece of land, which he rejected, informed DO Jokhio.

When the residents and shop owners resorted to vandalism to stop the operation, Gulberg SP Captain Asim Qaimkhani, DSP anti-encroachment cell Abu Talha and DO Jokhio held negotiations with the enraged protesters. It was then decided that an alternate place would be given to the residents and the furniture market shop owners in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Town so they can voluntarily evacuate the land.

When they took some of the residents and shopkeepers to the plot they intended to allocate to them, it was discovered that the land was the property of a particular society in Gulshan-e-Iqbal town that refused to give clearance. This further delayed the operation and the evacuation workforce kept on waiting for any kind of decision or signal.

Meanwhile, some of the protesters insisted that the encroached land belonged to the railways department and living in the goth was their right.

The operation was called off, as residents and shop owners refused to budge until an alternate place was allotted to them.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 25^th,  2011.