HYDERABAD:
National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Sindh Assistant Director Atta Muhammad Qureshi, has been accused of illegally occupying his wife and daughter’s agricultural land and mortgaging their properties.
Dr Farah Naz claimed, at a press conference on Tuesday, that her father seized their fruit farms in Thatta last month. “My mother, Yasmeen Atta, and my maternal uncle, Shah Zaman, own the 112-acre farm, where they grow mango, pomegranate and persimmon (chickoo). They bought the farm in 1983 and my mother has an 80% share,” she mantained.
Dr Naz said her mother has been living separately from her father since 1999 but the two have not divorced yet. “My father’s men have sold at least 20 trucks of fruit from the farm, so far, to a merchant in Lahore,” she said, adding, “He also changed merchants and no longer sells the fruits to the merchant we did business with for a long time.”
According to Dr Naz, her father did not dare to occupy the farms until he was made the NAB assistant director after he retired from the police.
“In 2008, he tried to mortgage our bungalow in Clifton, Karachi to a private bank for Rs20 million but we contacted the bank to prevent the release of a sanctioned loan to him.”
She blamed the Thatta police for inaction because of her father’s position. “When I visited the police station to register the FIR, the SHO asked me to meet the DPO. When I met the DPO, he suggested that I go to court.”
Dr Naz and her mother have appealed to the chief justice of Pakistan and chief justice of the Sindh High Court to take notice of the matter and help them retrieve their agricultural lands.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 8th, 2011.
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