Property affairs: Revenue Dept stopped from claiming 47 acres of evacuee property

Treason case sought against Zardari, others for criticising army

LAHORE:

A property once declared ‘evacuee’ – even by mistake – cannot be re-categorised. This was held by the Supreme Court on Friday during proceedings on a petition seeking the cancellation of evacuee status of 47 acres of evacuee property. 

Justice Mian Saqib Nisar was heading the three-member bench.

Additional Advocate General Azeem Malik, representing the petitioner Revenue Department said, the land, situated in Multan, had been allotted to a Hindu man, Pujara Ram, through auction.

He said at the time of Partition, Ram migrated to India without paying the full price for the land. It was later allotted to Shadi Ahmed, who had migrated to Pakistan from India. Later, the Revenue Department allotted the land to the wife of one of the department’s former officers.

Advocate Malik said the land belonged to the Revenue Department but the Lahore High Court had accepted an appeal filed by Ahmed’s heirs regardless of the facts of the case. He requested the court to accept the Revenue Department’s appeal and cancel the land’s allotment to Ahmed.

Justice Nisar remarked that the court had sympathy for refugees. However, he said, many influential refugees had been allotted large tracts of land while the poorer ones had gotten nothing.

The court dismissed the Revenue Department’s appeal and upheld the allotment of land to Ahmed’s legal heirs. The court also held that the land commission was the competent forum to deal with issues pertaining to evacuee properties and that civil courts lacked jurisdiction to deal with them.

‘How dare you criticise the army’

An additional district and sessions judge sought comments from the Mughalpura SHO on a petition seeking a treason case against former president Asif Ali Zardari and two former prime ministers among others for alleged hate speech against the army.

Petitioner Muhammad Ilyas Gujar said under the Constitution, verbally attacking the army was tantamount to treason. He said Zardari; Pakistan Peoples Party Co-Chairman Bilawal Bhutto; former prime ministers Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani and Raja Pervez Ashraf; Aseefa Bhutto and Sherry Rehman among others were complicit in hate speech against the army. He said that the respondents were hand-in-glove with anti-Pakistan forces that wanted to derail the country. He said the hateful speech delivered by Zardari had meant to sabotage Operation Zarb-e-Azab and the Rangers’ operation against the mafia and target killers in Karachi. The petitioner requested the court to direct police high ups to register a case against the respondents.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th, 2015.