Expat accuses Murree authorities of grabbing ancestral land

Says 11 written complaints have also been sent to Pakistan Citizen Portal but to no avail

MURREE:

An overseas Pakistani has accused the Murree Finance Department and a land mafia of grabbing hundreds of kanals of his ancestral land next to the Murree-Islamabad Expressway.

Addressing a press conference at the Murree Press Club, Javed Iqbal Abbasi, who lived in the United Kingdom (UK), said that his ancestral land of 249 kanal and 583 kanal in Mouza Tehsil Murree had allegedly been occupied through forgery with the connivance of the Muree Finance Department and an influential land mafia.

He said that a civil court had disposed of the matter in his favour, the finance department has failed to implement the court order.

He said that 11 written complaints have also been sent to the Pakistan Citizen Portal, but to no avail.

He alleged that the Pine Garden Society, with the connivance of the finance department, has occupied over 1,000 acres of his ancestral land and construction has been carried out. He said that a land-grabbing mafia had sold the land to society. He said that the Murree administration had recently carried out an arbitrary operation on Murree Express, but they did not take action against the said society which, according to him, has been constructed on the occupied land.

A resident named Habibur Rehman and other people of the area told the press conference that their land has also been occupied by the housing society where construction and buying and selling is taking place and dozens of evergreen trees have also been cut down. “The land mafia has become so powerful that they even refuse to obey the orders of courts and high officials, including the prime minister,” they said.

Abbasi said that he had also filed his case online from England with the Prosecution DC and Overseas Commission on March 31, 2016, but nothing has been done so far. He had also made written requests to the higher authorities in the finance department in 2004 to rectify the land record, but they have done nothing in this regard.

He appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan, the president, the prime minister and the Punjab chief minister to ban many illegal buying and selling in the said housing society and order to retrieve his land from occupation.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 1^st, 2021.