Karachi: Land reserved for inter-city bus terminal grabbed by mafia

[Naveed Yaseen]

By Qadeer Tanoli
Land, measuring about 45 acres, reserved for the inter-city bus terminal by the City District Government Karachi (CDGK) at Deh Bhitti Amri, Super Highway, has been grabbed by the land mafia.

It is reliably learnt that the land-grabbers with the connivance of police have constructed concrete houses over a stretch of 30 acres besides constructing “fictitious graves” on the remaining 15 acres.

The land mafia is reportedly selling the precious land of the city government at throwaway rates. It is also learnt that the land mafia had managed to get official electricity, gas and water connections for the grabbed land.

The land mafia at the Deh Bhitti Amri poses as being affiliated with political parties to avoid any anti-encroachment campaign on behalf of the CDGK, and, in this effort, is also displaying portraits of some prominent political figures at key places of the grabbed land to clearly show their links.

The land-grabbers have a special modus operandi. They first communicate with the police station concerned in groups of 20 to 50 people to exert more pressure. The police officials in question, it is learnt, have not fixed specific rates for the land-grabbers and the amount usually varies depending on their influence in the power corridors. Corroborating this claim, some inhabitants of the area on condition of anonymity told The News that, without the connivance of the police, nobody could even place or remove a single stone from the land in question.

They said that after getting clearance to take up possession of the land, the land-grabbers made plots and started selling them almost instantly to interested parties. Currently, a plot measuring 120 square yards in the area may be obtained from the land-grabbers at Rs50,000 to Rs60,000, it is learnt.

The land off Super Highway is not the only area to be targeted. Investigations by The News also uncovered that the land-grabbers have also usurped housing societies including Aligarh Society, Lucknow Society and Al-Habib Cooperative Society.

District Coordination Officer (DCO) Karachi, Jawed Hanif Khan, when contacted, confirmed that the land allocated for the bus terminal has been grabbed by the land mafia.

He said that the city government attempted several times to evacuate the grabbed land but that proved counterproductive and often created a law and order situation.

“Naturally we had to retreat,” he said and added that the land-grabbers have become powerful in the city and a strong will was needed to rein them in. He said that the land mafia had grabbed the land despite the erection of boundary walls on the reserved land of the bus terminal.

He said that concrete houses have been built on 30 acres of land and a graveyard has been made on the remaining 15 acres.

He said that many graves on the land were fictitious in order to stop any sort of development there. “We have even approached the Sindh High Court to resolve the issue but the matter remains undecided,” he said.

He said that the land mafia has many strategies to tackle all possible checks and balances that may impede land-grabbing. The most common method, he said, was that these elements politicise the issue and gave it an ethnic hue.

He said that different vested interests including those having political backing were involved in the land-grabbing and implementation of the law in its true spirit was badly needed to take back the land.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=200680