The Sindh police sought more time for apprehending the killers of Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) director Perveen Rehman as it submitted a progress report of the case to the Supreme Court on Wednesday.
The report stated that members of the joint investigation team (JIT) probing the case were making all-out efforts to trace the culprits. “Raids are being conducted at the hideouts of criminals to apprehend and interrogate them… and it is expected that a positive result could be achieved in the near future,” it added.
However, the three-judge bench of the top court, headed by Chief Justice Nasirul Mulk, expressed dissatisfaction over the report and observed that it was a matter of concern that the culprits in the case had not been arrested so far.
In its report, the Sindh police said that 15 suspects, arrested in various other cases, have been thoroughly interrogated about Rehman’s murder. It added that a team headed by Inspector Fareeduddin has been dispatched to Peshawar to apprehend suspect Raheem Swati.
The Sindh police also sent questionnaires to the member Board of Revenue and Sindh Abadies Authority Secretary, but received no proper reply till date, the report said. The questionnaire sent to the former sought details regarding the regularisation of goths and issues Rehman used to deal with.
It added that a police team also visited the OPP offices on December 9 and interviewed several employees to find any clues to the case.
While submitting the report, Karachi West deputy inspector general also admitted that police had so far failed to trace the laptop and cellphone of Rehman, who was murdered in March 2013.
The court asked Sindh police to keep the report a secret and submit it to the bench in an envelope before adjourning the case till February 17.
Earlier, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) and 11 other petitioners through his counsel Reheel Kamran Sheikh suspected that the JIT is deliberately ignoring the land mafia because of the vested interests of a wide range of ‘influential parties’.
The petitioners pointed out that the JIT has failed to take into account the fact that Rehman was collaborating with the government of Sindh in the identification, survey and mapping of various goths/settlements in various parts of Karachi for the purposes of their regularisation.
“Nearly 1063 goths were regularised by the government of Sindh through the efforts of Rehman, while more than 1,000 remained to be regularised,” it said, adding that when a goth/settlement is regularised it becomes difficult to evict the residents.
“Consequently, the price of the land also increases. Both of these factors make it difficult for the land mafia and the real estate developers to grab land through forced eviction or fraudulent/coercive transactions,” it added.
The application said residents of various goths were approaching Rehman in order to seek her assistance for the purposes of regularisation of their settlements. “Rehman had, therefore, become a symbol of resistance against the land mafia and the real estate developers,” it says. The petitioners also noted that there has been no regularisation since Rehman’s murder.
Published in The Express Tribune, December 18th, 2014.
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