LAHORE, May 26: A widow and her children have been struggling for the last three years or so to get back their inherited land, which some officials of the Lahore Cant Cooperative Housing Society (now the Defence Housing Authority) fraudulently got transferred to society’s name in 1981.
The family came to know about the alleged illegality about three years ago.
Mirza Khalid Baig told Dawn that his father Mirza Aslam Baig, a resident of Jahangir Park in Shahdara, owned 53 kanal and seven marla land in Mauza Chungi Amar Sidhu in Cantonment Tehsil of Lahore. After his father’s death in 2007, the land was transferred to his family. The sub-registrar of Aziz Bhatti Town on February 25, 2008 issued a non-encumbrance certificate, declaring his mother and her eight children owners of the land bearing Khasra numbers 1440, 1436, 1437 and 1439.
Khalid said when he and his brothers tried to take possession of their land they were told by housing society authorities that their father sold the land to the housing scheme through sale conveyance deeds (No. 5096, dated March 4 and No. 6984 dated May 6, 1981).
He said he got a case (No. 870/10) registered against society secretary Lt-Col Syed Afzaal Hussain (retired) and others in North Cantonment Police Station on July 8, 2010 for preparing fake documents and illegally transferring the land to society’s name. He said the police did not take action against the accused in spite of an order by a civil judge declaring the sale deed of May 6, 1981 “bogus, illegal and void”.
Khalid said that on the request of the North Cantonment police SHO the Aziz Bhatti Town sub-registrar found on May 10, 2011 that the sale conveyance deed did not bear the signature and thumb impression of the seller and was without a copy of his national identity card.
He said police was reluctant to take action against DHA directors who were getting a metalled road constructed on the land on April 8 this year. He said DHA Lahore officials threatened him with consequences when he and his brother Mirza Iqbal Baig visited the site.
Khalid appealed to the Supreme Court chief justice to take notice of DHA’s ‘highhandedness’ and get his family the land back.
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