KARACHI: Around 4.30pm on Feb 25 last year, an altercation took place between two groups of people on Mai Kolachi Road, near the US consulate. While the details of the brawl itself are unclear, the bone of contention was allegedly a three-acre chunk of prime real estate located just off the thoroughfare. One of its two co-owners, builder and developer Javed Iqbal had employed a local JUI-F leader named Jibrail Khan, 32, to work there as a supervisor. Several sources claim that the huge plot is coveted by extremely powerful individuals at the top of the political food chain.
Some days earlier, this party had sent in their supporters to occupy the plot. On Feb 25, Jibrail got into a heated confrontation with them. An FIR was filed against him for rioting armed with a deadly weapon, kidnapping and attempted murder. Several other FIRs (copies of which are in Dawn’s possession) were also filed against him in Karachi and other parts of Sindh, including Shikarpur, Moro, Qazi Ahmed and Nawabshah for various crimes, ostensibly committed within the span of a few weeks, including theft of cattle, cash and a motorbike. He was arrested, taken to Central Jail and a few weeks later, transferred to prison in Nawabshah.
According to an individual close to Jibrail, who originally hails from KP, “He’s never been anywhere in Sindh except for Karachi”. Even after he was acquitted by a Shaheed Benazirabad court, with the judicial magistrate in his order saying there had been an abuse of power and that Jibrail had been falsely implicated, he continued to be detained in the same prison.
The plot’s co-owner, Mr Iqbal, alleges that a fake FIR was filed against him as well and he was detained by the Counter Terrorism Department police for four days, during which, he says, he was ordered to surrender the plot in writing. He refused; ultimately, he obtained relief from the Sindh High Court.
Political big guns soon became involved. Rashid Mehmood Soomro, secretary general of JUI-F Sindh, issued a strongly worded statement on social media in Jibrail’s defence, describing the dispute as one in connection with a plot which “two big crocodiles are rushing to grab”. He denounced one of them as “someone who perhaps believes he owns Sindh, owns the country, and thinks he can use brute force to grab land…”; he warned that if the matter was not resolved quickly, Sindh would go up in flames.
This is the tip of the iceberg that illustrates the lawlessness prevailing in Sindh, where an entire system allegedly operates free from the constraints of the law and institutional guardrails, beholden only to its political masters and their whims, and existing solely to rake in eyewatering fortunes for everyone involved.
While the sources of this wealth are many and varied, Karachi’s precious real estate is the gift that keeps on giving, and it is the focus of this report. Sources within the political leadership, bureaucracy and civil society speak of a city divided up into zones, with a trusted front man (sometimes several) presiding over receipts from each area under his control. Among these are a seasoned medical professional, a civil servant active in brokering land deals, a business group that allegedly handles all the ‘earnings’ generated in the province, etc.
Given the heft of the personalities involved, most sources were unwilling to speak on the record, but there is sufficient documentary evidence and on-ground reporting by Dawn to support their statements. Certain names have been changed to protect the individuals’ identity. With the law having been weaponised to silence the media, drawing too clear a picture can be fraught with risk, so readers are invited to connect the dots where possible.
King of the West?
In a country where political fortunes can go through cycles of boom and bust, Ali Hassan Brohi — also known as Ali Hassan Zehri because of his Baloch tribal ancestry — has suffered a setback of sorts. On Feb 3, he tendered his resignation from the Balochistan cabinet. But, given his powerful connections, this may be only a bump in the road.
There was a time he was said to be on the run and allegedly in the crosshairs of the ‘encounter specialist’ — Rao Anwar, then SSP Malir. Fast forward to December 2024, he was sworn in as Balochistan’s minister for agriculture and cooperatives. His recent setbacks in that province notwithstanding, he is arguably one of the most powerful people in Sindh, rumoured to have the ear of no less than the president himself.
Letter of resignation by Ali Hassan Zehri to CM Balochistan.
Hailing from Bandhi, Nawabshah district (since renamed Shaheed Benazirabad), he was once, as a prominent politician told Dawn, in the employ of an octroi tax collector in Bolari, district Jamshoro.
“He wasn’t even a manager, but a helper. However, according to the contractor, he was extremely sharp.” Showing a political savvy that was to stand him in good stead, Mr Brohi developed contacts with low-level PPP workers and over time, with senior party leaders in Nawabshah. With the help of his connections, alleges the politician, Mr Brohi gradually worked his way out of small-town Sindh to providing muscle for the PPP in connection with Karachi’s pricey real estate — but then, there was a falling out.
Several sources confirmed to Dawn that Mr Brohi made a run for Balochistan; police close to the Sindh-Balochistan border had received orders from SSP Rao to ‘intercept’ him, and they fired upon his vehicle in the Mochko area, but he made it across. There he sought shelter with certain political and tribal heavyweights, two of whom are said to have paved the way for his rapprochement with his former benefactor several years later when they joined the PPP.
Until then, though, Mr Brohi’s travails were far from over. On May 20, 2020, English and Urdu newspapers carried a public notice by the deputy commissioner, district West (the DC office is the most senior in the district revenue department). The notice declared Mr Brohi “an extremely notorious individual” and claimed he had grabbed over 3,000 acres of state and private land worth billions of rupees. It read: “For his immense crimes of forgery and land grabs, Ali Hassan Brohi is under a comprehensive and impartial inquiry by this office. A significant number of fake entries managed by Ali Hassan Brohi in the revenue record of district West have been found, which will be conveyed to higher authorities with recommendations for cancellation and penal action after completion of scrutiny.” The notice asked for public assistance in gathering further information.
Public notice published in a national daily, declaring Mr Brohi “an extremely notorious individual” and claiming he had grabbed over 3,000 acres of state and private land worth billions of rupees.
On the orders of Owais Muzaffar Tappi who was believed to run the system at the time, the then DC West Fayyaz Solangi retrieved the lands that Mr Brohi had allegedly grabbed. However, as this story will later show, Mr Solangi would come to regret following those orders so faithfully.
In 2021, FIA’s corporate crime circle, Karachi office, instituted an enquiry based on what it claimed was a reference from the DIG CTD, Sindh, in which Mr Brohi and eight others were named on the basis of an FIR (no 811/2021) filed in Karachi. Briefly, the FIR accused Mr Brohi of having taken Rs20 million from drug dealers to bribe two policemen with Rs7m to get two of his alleged front men to spring three Nigerian nationals from custody. According to the FIA’s brief, subsequent enquiries brought to light 14 FIRs dating from 2007 till 2020, in which Mr Brohi is named as the accused in eight, while the rest nominate two other individuals described as his “front men”.
The charges against him include terrorism, murder, attempted murder, rioting armed with a deadly weapon, dacoity, causing hurt and criminal intimidation, among others. The document also names nine “front men” of Mr Brohi in whose name the latter had “acquired/ purchased various properties in different areas” of Karachi. These findings, according to the brief, are based on only a partial record, some of it obtained from the digitised records compiled by the Land Revenue Management Information Systems (LARMIS), Board of Revenue (BoR), Sindh. Mr Brohi did not respond to questions put to him in writing by Dawn regarding these allegations and other claims about him by sources quoted in this report.
(Of the eight FIRs in which Mr Brohi is nominated as the sole accused, police sources contacted by Dawn were able to confirm three FIRs from their record, plus two more registered in 2021 that are not listed in the FIA brief.)
In conclusion, the brief says that in December 2021, the enquiry was transferred to FIA headquarters in Islamabad. The story of that transfer is revealing in its brazen conflict of interest.
In March 2021, Mr Brohi’s wife, Samina Mumtaz Zehri was elected to the Senate on a reserved women’s seat. According to a senior political leader, her election was managed by former ISI chief Faiz Hameed, who had her vote shifted to Hub from Karachi and presented her as a Senate candidate from the Balochistan Awami Party. (The BAP is well known to have the military establishment’s backing.) After her election, Ms Zehri became a member of the standing committee on interior. At its meeting on Oct 22, 2021, the minutes of which are in Dawn’s possession, the members made several recommendations. One of these reads: “Senators Rana Maqbool Ahmed, Azam Nazir Tarar and Muhammad Talha Mahmood were of the considered opinion that Dr Farooq, deputy director of FIA, Karachi has now become a controversial officer and the case pointed by Senator Samina Mumtaz Zehri should be transferred to Islamabad and interrogated…” The case in question was the FIA’s inquiry into Ms Zehri’s own husband.
As per its letter dated Dec 27, 2021 acknowledging the standing committee’s decision, the DG FIA’s Islamabad office directed that the enquiry report be submitted for perusal to the DG, FIA within a fortnight. The DG FIA did not respond to repeated requests in writing from Dawn as to the fate of the enquiry.
Minutes of the meeting of the Senate standing committee on interior from Oct 22, 2021.
On Nov 4, 2024, Senior Vice President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce & Industry Saquib Fayyaz Magoon wrote to Chief Secretary Sindh Asif Hyder Shah about a complaint forwarded to him by President, Karachi Chamber of Commerce & Industries Jawed Bilwani. The complaint, by businessman Shoaib Razzak Makkad and also dated Nov 4, 2024, was enclosed with the letter to the chief secretary.
Mr Makkad in his complaint stated that he was a partner in Salina International, a salt manufacturing business. According to him, he was “in possession of land measuring 54.3 acres since 2019” in Mauripur, district Keamari. “…[O]n June 28, 2024, Tapedar … and Tapedar …, notable front men of Ali Hassan Brohi, with some unknown people came with heavy weapons and … encroached on the entire land. They are still today residing [there] with heavy weapons.”
Saquib Fayyaz Magoon’s letter to chief secretary Sindh.
A senior government officer told Dawn, “In districts West and Keamari, without Ali Hassan’s NOC, neither DC, nor SSP, nor mukhtiarkar, nor some ACs — such as of Manghopir and Mauripur — can be appointed.” This view was corroborated by sources in the police, bureaucracy, business sector and PPP itself. A seasoned bureaucrat said that even after lease papers for a particular housing society in district West had been signed, “the AC and mukhtiarkar wouldn’t make an entry in their mutation registers because they don’t do anything unless specifically ordered by Ali Hassan.”
(A mukhtiarkar is a BoR official just below the assistant commissioner, responsible for processing and issuing documents related to land revenue, which makes this an extremely powerful post.)
This is not to suggest that Mr Brohi is the only one whose name crops up in context of allegedly questionable land dealings. However, given his political profile, he is arguably the most prominent among these individuals.
Dirty business
Before moving on to the other actors in the sordid saga of land grabbing in Karachi, a brief note on how land ownership is created followed by some instances of shady real estate dealings that Dawn has uncovered.
The Board of Revenue, Sindh is original custodian of all the land in the province. Aside from revenue collection and maintaining land records in Sindh, BoR allots land to individuals, societies and various institutions and development authorities such as Karachi Development Authority (KDA), Lyari Development Authority (LDA), Defence Housing Authority, etc to develop schemes for specific purposes.
Relevant revenue officials ‘survey’ an area of state land and divide it into blocks with each given a unique identifier called a “survey number”. The surveyed land can then be allotted according to a procedure specified under the Sindh Colonisation and Disposal of Government Land Rules, 2005. Unsurveyed land is termed ‘na class’ land, which belongs to the original owner, the state, which holds it in trust for the public. Na class or unsurveyed land is distinguished on BoR maps by a different colour and different sequence of numbers than surveyed land.
But evidence that rules of procedure are being violated with breathtaking impunity — and with full knowledge of the authorities — lies scattered all across Karachi. Districts West (particularly in Halkani, Bund Murad and Jam Chakro), Keamari (which was carved out of the original district West in 2020), East and Malir have become increasingly attractive for builders. “To make a project viable inside the city is quite difficult because you can’t find big chunks of land there, and whatever land that does exist there is expensive,” says Hamid Khan* of the Association of Builders and Developers of Pakistan (ABAD). “That’s why builders tend to focus on the suburbs.”
No doubt there are countless examples of illegal land use within Karachi proper, including encroachment on amenity plots, by elements connected with all political parties — PPP, MQM and ANP (during the latter two’s heyday in the city), and even by the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan for a period. For reasons of space, however, this report focuses on Karachi’s outlying areas and encroachments within recent years.
Dawn Investigations visited multiple sites in district West, as well as the huge development scheme known as Hawkesbay Scheme 42 in district Keamari. Where until some years ago there were vast stretches of empty land dotted with goths (rural settlements), dozens of gated housing schemes are now coming up, many boasting little more than an entrance, a boundary wall and a booking office where dubious claims about the builders’ title to land are made.
Take Al-Jannat City by MAA Construction & Builders Pvt Ltd in deh Halkani, for example. Mohammed Aqeel in the booking office informs the Dawn correspondent, who approaches him as a prospective investor, that there are 575 residential plots of 120 sq yards each available here, and a number of commercial plots. The proposed layout plan displayed in the booking office shows the project as being spread across 32.8 acres on survey numbers 57, 58, 59 and 61. The salesperson says six families are already residing in the society while around 20 houses are under construction. Residential plots cost between Rs3 to 3.5 million, with all sales final. Calculated at Rs3.3m each, the residential plots alone add up to at least Rs1.84 billion.
A masterplan of the housing society is plastered on a wall inside the Al Jannat City office.
“If you delay buying for a month, the price could cross four million rupees,” cautions Mr Aqeel. “Construction has been picking up pace here and there’s no other leased project nearing completion in the area.” He adds: “We have been issuing sub-leases to owners of the plots.” The question is: how is that possible when the land on which Al-Jannat City is coming up does not even belong to the builder?
Mr Aqeel claims LDA has leased the land to the builders, but tellingly, he refuses to show the lease. “Not until you purchase a plot,” he says firmly. (Deh Halkani is part of what is known as Scheme 43, which the BoR has given only as a ‘controlled’ area to LDA. The Authority itself has no lease for it.)
To delve deeper into the builder’s claims, Dawn GIS department referred to the digitised data in LARMIS. The apex court in 2012 banned the mutation of public land in Sindh, but in 2019, it partially lifted the ban in areas where the land record had been digitised. Thus, one can reasonably assume that the LARMIS data, where it exists, is up to date.
It turns out that survey numbers 57, 58, 59 and 61 actually lie on the other side of the road from where Al-Jannat City is coming up. The project is located on what is entirely state land. Interestingly, taken together, these survey numbers almost mirror the dimensions of the project itself.
A short drive away on the main road is Alvisha Housing Society by the same builder, located opposite the Ijtema Gah where a mammoth religious congregation gathers every year. The salesman at the project office tells the correspondent that 120- and 160-sq yard residential and 200 sq yard commercial plots are available for sale in blocks A, B and C. In block C, a 120 sq yard plot costs Rs2.8m lump sum, and Rs3.6m on a 42-month installment plan.
When asked about official approvals, one of the two men present says that for the time being, the plots in block A, where the office is located, are being offered on sale to “those who have faith in the builder” and not to the general public. When asked why that is so, he admits that the “paperwork for block A is not 100 per cent complete, unlike blocks B and C.”
He lays out the society’s proposed layout plan on the desk; it lists the survey numbers (86, 87, 88 and 89) on which it is being constructed. Frontline Marketing, which is handling the project, shares with Dawn an NOC issued by LDA which also mentions the same survey numbers, 86 to 89.
However, Dawn’s GIS department has determined that these survey numbers lie quite some distance away, in the direction where the men in the sales office vaguely indicated that blocks B and C will come up. Moreover, Alvisha’s block A is actually situated on survey numbers 96 and 97. It is not known what is the reason for this discrepancy.
Maps showing the Alvisha and Al-Jannat housing schemes.
But revenue officials tell Dawn this kind of discrepancy is very common. One explains it thus: “Sometimes there are other claimants to the land; sometimes builders will use ownership of one piece of survey land to falsely claim ownership over other surveyed land, or even over unsurveyed land; another ploy is to get a fake allotment of unsurveyed land and, after possession, go to the revenue department for a survey number.”
Dawn’s letter to MAA Construction & Builders Pvt Ltd was returned. Another letter with questions to Frontline Marketing received no response either.
With around 60 projects in Karachi, GFS Builders & Developers is one of the big players in Pakistan’s real estate market. Supported by a slick marketing campaign, its numerous smooth-talking salespersons push discount offers, and district West is dotted with a number of their projects. A closer look at North Town Residency Phase-2 exposes some shocking facts.
According to an ‘NOC’ for sale and advertisement of plots in NTR phase 2 issued by the Sindh Building Control Association, the project measures 30 acres on land bearing survey numbers 363 to 367 “out of na class no 294 in deh Halkani”. The BoR map submitted to the Supreme Court in 2013 clearly shows this entire area — which falls partly in deh Halkani and partly in deh Bund Murad — as being na class (or unsurveyed/state land). The LARMIS website currently shows the same situation in deh Halkani. The map for deh Bund Murad is missing. Dawn received no response to questions it sent in writing to the GFS CEO.
Map of GFS North Town Phase 2.
(Dawn repeatedly contacted the DC West; Senior Member Board of Revenue, Sindh with a cc to the Chief Secretary, Sindh; Member, Land Utilisation, BoR; and Project Director, LARMIS to ask about the provenance of the survey numbers in connection with the aforementioned housing projects. There was no response from any of them except for LARMIS Assistant Director, Coordination, Hafeezullah Abbasi. Mr Abbasi informed Dawn over the phone that LARMIS does not possess the data in question. “We can only digitise the data that we have been provided.”)
Filthy rich
Interestingly, the above-mentioned na class number — no 294 — from which piece of land GFS representatives claim that survey numbers 363 to 367 have been carved out for its North Town Residency-Phase 2, crops up in a complaint to NAB about huge tracts of land being illegally taken over and sold. A list of suspicious sales/allotments was enclosed with the complaint, mentioning the survey/na class numbers, area and value, and ‘sellers’ and ‘purchasers’ of the land in question. According to this, 82 acres on na class numbers 284 – 294 were illegally sold/allotted to GFS.
The dubious transactions listed in the complaint to NAB involve nearly 1,500 acres, including around 1,150 acres of state land. On Oct 11, 2023, NAB wrote to DC West informing him about the complaint it had received regarding “illegal sale/ allotment of government land”, and asking him to furnish NAB with a comprehensive report by Oct 23, 2023.
Letter written by NAB to the DC West, informing him about the complaint it had received regarding “illegal sale/ allotment of government land” in the district and seeking a comprehensive report by Oct 23, 2023.
Repeated attempts to seek NAB’s official response to this complaint went unanswered. Sources told Dawn that NAB had initiated a formal enquiry based on the allegations in this complaint, but recently, 166 cases, enquiries, references and complaints relating to the departments of revenue, local government and food had been transferred to Sindh’s Anti-Corruption Establishment.
The list enclosed with the complaint to NAB lays bare how predatory networks have hollowed out governance in Sindh — like locusts stripping bare every field they descend upon. Those who acquired the land allegedly through illegal sale/allotment include a number of well-known builders and developers. And among those accused of supplying them the land — the ‘sellers’ — are Ali Hassan Brohi, an SHO and a mukhtiarkar.
The cop is Ghulam Hussain Korai, then SHO Manghopir in district West. Consider just one of the parcels of land that he, jointly with one Yousuf Brohi, is accused of grabbing: 200 acres of state land in deh Bund Murad which was, as per this document, worth an eye-watering Rs4 bn.
An SHO can be a grade 14 (sub-inspector) or grade 16 (inspector) officer, whose monthly salary is at the most Rs120,000. In December 2024, after complaints by a number of businessmen about brazen land grabbing in Karachi became too vociferous to ignore, the powers that be ordered the Sindh government to address the issue.
Inspector Korai was among five police officers who were subsequently transferred to desk jobs at the police headquarters. (A number of revenue officials were also transferred, though often replaced, say sources, with others of equally ill repute but boasting strong ties with those who matter in the provincial leadership.)
In response to Dawn’s questions, Inspector Korai described the allegations against him as “false, fabricated, and baseless … the [Association of Builders & Developers] have withdrawn their application, and the issue has been resolved accordingly.” He enclosed a letter from ABAD with his response. An excerpt from it reads: “… due to unavoidable circumstances the complainant currently displaying a lack of coordination with ABAD regarding their submitted complaints … We hereby request to withdraw the complaint against him.” Dawn was unable to confirm the nature of the “unavoidable circumstances”. Mr Korai remains without any posting. Sources say he has been sanctioned several times for misconduct.
There is on the same list one Ejaz, described as mukhtiarkar Scheme 33, who is alleged to have handed over in a fraudulent manner seven acres in Scheme 33 itself to an undisclosed builder and developer. This appears to be a reference to Aijazul Hassan Khan. Incidentally, Mr Aijaz was among 11 mukhtiarkars suspended in 2023 for land fraud.
It is difficult to overstate the cruel irony in this situation. While public land gets siphoned away by unscrupulous builders hand in glove with rapacious elements from the ruling elite and corrupt government officials, affordable public sector housing schemes almost never go beyond the blueprint.
Hawkesbay Scheme 42, Karachi’s oldest public sector project, is a stark example. This scheme was started in 1984 for the low- and middle-income segment by KDA and transferred to LDA in 1996. Over four decades later, much of it is still undeveloped and without electricity or water. Many original allottees remained unable during their lifetime to take possession of their plots, which they had paid for with their hard-earned money.
Scheme 42 even includes a block exclusively for overseas Pakistanis, but they too have nothing to show for their investment till today. And yet, those with no right to the land but plenty of clout have staked their claim to the overseas block by building a boundary wall around its perimeter, repeatedly. Each time the wall is bulldozed by the authorities, it comes up again within no time.
An illegal housing society called Aashqan-e-Mustafa has materialised along the Suparco Road which cuts through Scheme 42. Two front men of an MPA are said to be handling transactions.
A view of the Aashqan-e-Mustafa society’s site office.
A view of the Aashqan-e-Mustafa society on Suparco Road.
When a Dawn Investigations team visits, a man strolls up, asking if they are interested in a plot and if so, to take their queries to Madina Real Estate nearby. There are 100- or 120-square yard plots available for sale here, says the realtor: “a 400-sq yard commercial plot alongside the main road costs Rs6.5m with cash payment over three months.” When asked whether the society has a lease from the development authority, he replies: “No, it’s not leased but this is part of the Gothabad Scheme, so you’ll get a sanad if you buy here.” This means the government had notified this piece of state land for a goth situated here — ostensibly in this case, Kachelo Goth. However, sanads can only be issued to the original residents of a goth. Incidentally, Kachelo Goth actually lies around 2km away.
A map of the Aashqan-e-Mustafa society.
Predictably, the Gothabad Scheme over the years has become another vehicle for corruption since it began in 1987 to provide housing to the deserving indigenous population in rural Sindh. Gothabad mukhiarkars began issuing fake sanads, even multiple sanads to one individual to enable the latter to claim title over a large area.
Mohammed Shahnawaz at the Aashqan-e-Mustafa housing society site office in fact claimed that buyers would be given backdated sanads because “sanads stopped being issued after 2012”. Dawn received no response to questions addressed in writing to the proprietors of Aashqan-e-Mustafa.
In June 2014, during Supreme Court hearings into the Karachi unrest case, BoR submitted a report stating that 59,803 acres of state land had been encroached upon. Backroom land deals are not mere irregularities — they are a fundamental breach of public trust. State land is not for the government to bestow upon whomever it favours, which is why a recent Sindh High Court judgement underscored that, in the interest of transparency, state land must be disposed of through an open auction.
Fake NOCs, no paper trail
All the housing societies investigated for this report happen to fall under LDA. Ahmed Saeed*, who is very familiar with the LDA’s workings, reveals that the Authority has in umpteen instances showed ‘na class’ land (ie unsurveyed land which cannot be allotted to anyone and on which no project can be constructed) as survey land. He alleges that everyone, including BoR, is party to the fraud.
According to him, the landgrabber writes to the Director General LDA to request an NOC for the layout plan on what they claim is their land. The DG sends the letter to the relevant DC, asking for clarification on the status of the land in question. The DC forwards it to the mukhtiarkar who takes out a report which then goes back to the DC, who forwards it to the DG confirming the land does indeed belong to the interested party.
“The official fee for approval of the layout plan is Rs1.3m per acre, and the bribe for showing na class land as survey land is Rs500,000 per acre,” says Mr Saeed. “But because the letters have been sent around by hand, not by a dispatcher, there’s no trail. LDA will say they did this on BoR’s say-so; if you ask BoR for verification, they’ll say this is state land and they never gave approval for it. You show them the correspondence — and they’ll say it’s fake, but they all know. They’re all involved.” In other words, classic smoke and mirrors.
At his office, a rather harried-looking DG LDA Safdar Bughio, tells Dawn: “Our planning department verifies ownership through the concerned DC office; it’s BoR that checks whether the builder has ownership or not. When they confirm ownership title, then our planning department does the technical work on it [to issue NOC for layout plan].”
LDA planning department head, Mohammed Arbab, toes a similar line: “Our mandate and function is the KBTPR [Karachi Building and Town Planning Rules]. We are only a town planning agency. The identification of the land is done by the DC, title verification is done by the DC, record of survey numbers is with the DC.”
However, Mr Bughio concedes there are some illegal housing societies. “It is also our responsibility to stop them. We do stop them, but officially we deal only with those who come for [layout plan] NOCs from us. But definitely I will soon start a programme in which we will take on the responsibility of dealing with them.”
As for Mr Arbab, when pressed further on the issue, he says: “Qabzay bhi wohi log kartay hain … na class land pay jin kay hukoomati links hotay hain.” (Encroachment on state land is done by those who have government connections.)
Other cogs in the wheel
There are nevertheless some public servants who try to discharge their duty with at least a degree of integrity. In instances where the mukhtiarkar concerned takes action and issues a notice to a suspected land grabber, the latter can approach the anti-encroachment tribunal. The Sindh Public Property (Removal of Encroachment) Act, 2010, empowers anti-encroachment tribunals headed by a retired district and sessions judge or an advocate of 10 years’ standing to determine the rights of the parties involved.
Too often, though, the only anti-encroachment tribunal in Karachi has given questionable decisions. In fact, several sources told Dawn that encroachers go to the tribunal with fake/ forged documents to establish title to the land they have grabbed by obtaining a stay order. “It’s simple,” says Umair Rafiq*, a senior bureaucrat. “Go meet the court reader, file an application quickly and get a stay. Then anyone who visits that land becomes guilty of contempt. You just pay one or two million rupees for this.”
Dawn has in its possession the copy of an order in suit no 15/ 2024, issued on July 23, 2024, by Muneer Bhutto, district and sessions judge and, until recently, presiding officer of the anti-encroachment tribunal. The plaintiff is Al-Faiz Builders Pvt Ltd while the defendants include officials from BoR, SBCA, LDA, anti-encroachment police personnel, etc.
In his interim order, the presiding offer restrained “the defendants, their agents and anyone on their behalf from eject[ting], evict[ing], dispossess[ing] the plaintiff from the suit property ie 32 acres land na class No 42 situated at Deh Methan, tapo Manghopir, district Keamari”.
Interestingly, the same presiding officer (now heading the Karachi Water & Sewerage Tribunal) was the focus of a complaint made earlier that year. In a letter dated Jan 30, 2024, a copy of which is available with Dawn, the DC East wrote to the Sindh High Court Registrar, the Member Inspection Team-II (a body that handles complaints against judicial officers in the district and lower courts), requesting further action on a complaint against Mr Bhutto that had been forwarded to him by the assistant commissioner East. With his letter, he enclosed a report submitted by a mukhtiarkar of Karachi East, Muhammad Irfan Lashari.
Mr Lashari in his complaint alleged that the presiding officer had granted a stay to land grabbers on 500 sq yards of state land at Fateh Mohammed Gabol Goth that had been reserved by the Sindh government for a dispensary for the local residents. In fact, he said in his report, possession had already been given to the health department representative with documentation to the effect. According to him, through the stay order, a contempt of court notice against him and letter of suspension, he was “pressurised to follow the unlawful order passed by the presiding officer of the tribunal. … The stay orders … not only provide cover to the land grabbers but also encourage them to usurp more state land in connivance with support of presiding officer of the said tribunal and his staff…”
Nothing came of this complaint. In fact, sources said that a “fake case” had been filed against the DC concerned, his properties were attached and he was declared an absconder.
(On Oct 15, 2025, in a development unrelated to Mr Lashari’s complaint, Muneer Bhutto was found guilty of misconduct after an enquiry by MIT member Justice Muhammad Faisal Kamal Alam of the Sindh High Court that began in 2021. Concluding that Mr Bhutto had “misused” his “senior official position”, the MIT imposed on him “the minor penalty of withholding of annual increment for a period of three years”.)
Despite repeated attempts, Mr Bhutto refused to receive Dawn’s letter with questions regarding the above allegations.
Nothing oils the wheels of elite capture like a corrupt bureaucracy. Seasoned bureaucrats hold that officers were generally appointed on merit in Benazir Bhutto’s time, but this changed after her assassination in December 2007. “As soon as PPP’s victory in the 2008 election seemed assured, officers began to get calls from the PPP leadership telling them to refrain from recruitment and from making any appointments,” says Rashid Saleem*, a retired assistant commissioner. “As soon as they came in, they began to recruit their own people.”
The passage of the 18th Amendment, say old-school bureaucrats, removed the guardrails entirely. “The 2012 recruits were rapidly promoted and are now in grade 19. Soon they’ll be in grade 20, secretary level. God help Sindh when that happens,” says Mr Saleem.
According to several senior civil servants, the Sindh Public Service Commission’s (SPSC) examination process has become seriously compromised, with ‘favoured’ candidates awarded inflated scores in the oral segment while deserving candidates are failed despite strong written performances. Each recruitment, appointment and promotion has a price, they claim.
Journalist Imdad Soomro has extensively investigated corruption in the SPSC. “To get recruited into a department, one has to pay between Rs5m to Rs10m,” he alleges. At the other end of the spectrum are the top posts, such as assistant commissioner, excise and taxation officer, DSP, mukhtiarkar, etc for which candidates must sit the Combined Competitive Examination or CCE. The ‘rates’ are higher for such “kamanay walay [lucrative] posts” as Mr Soomro puts it. According to him, to become AC or ETO, one must pay Rs80m; appointment as mukhtiarkar entails a bribe of Rs40m.
According to a retired official, “There’s an exam called the revenue qualifier exam for clerical staff who have served three years in the Revenue Department. Clerks have paid Rs15m to Rs20m to become assistant mukhtiarkar. Close to 30 clerks have become assistant mukhtiarkars in this manner.”
Often, all it takes for career advancement is to cultivate a mutually beneficial relationship with a political patron. Dawn was told that in one land development authority, an individual on a contingency contract as a watchman was now a grade-19 officer on an extremely important post.
The great Karachi land grab
Real estate in Karachi has been the cause of much disorder and violence. The final JIT report looking into the murder on March 13, 2013 of Perween Rahman, director of the Orangi Pilot Project, offered a revealing commentary.
Referring to the period between 2006-2012, and the ethnic conflict between Pashtuns and Mohajirs, it noted that cadres of both MQM and ANP were heavily involved in various criminal activities, especially land grabbing, as were the Taliban who were a potent militant force in Karachi at the time. “… whatever their stated political differences, all three groups worked hand in glove … Big developers … would ally themselves with these groups, using the militant wings of these groups as their ‘muscle’, in order to forcibly seize land. Anyone who came in their way was either threatened, or if they refused to back off, killed. …[O]ften murders that were declared as being politically motivated or acts of terrorism, were in actual fact land disputes that were made to look like political killings to cover up the real facts. The state apparatus, in the shape of the land revenue administration or the police, was either too weak, or complicit in the face of the great Karachi land grab.”
It was against this backdrop that the then Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in 2012 while hearing the Karachi ‘badamni’ (unrest) case, banned the Sindh government from effecting mutation, allotment, or transfer of any government land in Sindh until the province’s land record — huge amounts of which was destroyed in the rioting following the murder of Benazir Bhutto — was digitised. (The court conditionally lifted the ban in 2019 in instances where the record had been computerised.)
But the ban meant little in the areas of Karachi where state land was plentiful.
During retired Justice Maqbool Baqar’s tenure as chief minister Sindh in the runup to the 2024 election, an enquiry was held into allotments and mutations made by BoR Sindh between 2012 and 2023. That is, after the Supreme Court ban. Some of the findings are as follows.
In Manghopir, district West, there were forged entries and fake allotments in land record; an incident of arson was committed in 2021 by revenue officials, including mukhtiarkars and tapedars, “to deliberately destroy fake entries kept by the revenue officials in collusion with private beneficiaries”.
In deh Bund Murad, also district West, the enquiry found that “Government land worth billions of rupees in various na class … was illegally transferred to private individuals… .” Numerous revenue officials were named as being complicit and acquiring assets beyond their means. None of them appears to have been prosecuted.
According to the 2018 JIT report on money laundering worth billions of rupees through fake bank accounts, 562 acres of state land in Sindh, including 363 acres of Pakistan Steel Mill land, were “illegally allotted to private builders causing a loss of Rs4.14 billion to the national exchequer”. The report also alleged that Bahria Town Ltd had remitted Rs10bn into the fake accounts as kickbacks for grabbing thousands of acres of state as well as private lands for its projects in Karachi.
In 2023, a member of Sindh’s caretaker cabinet told Dawn: “[During the previous government,] the sub registrars and mukhtiarkars in Karachi would collect 600 to 700 million rupees per month for ‘upward’ distribution. They had a free hand. Even if someone’s land was legal, they would still charge according to the ‘system’ at the rate they had set, eg Korangi, Rs300,000 per acre. By transferring mukhtiarkars, we disrupted that system of collection.”
Under the caretaker setup, per one government official, security agencies were said to have taken up the task of ‘cleaning the system’. Officials were assured that “qabzas will not happen like before”. A number of people were even put on the ECL, unofficially if not officially. But despite those claims, rather little has changed in the way that real estate is occupied in the city. The faces may be different, but the practices remain the same.
Thus, individuals like Mr Brohi have even greater sway than before; they are fixtures in the corridors of power, protected by their formidable patrons. According to a bureaucrat, “Even DIGs, senior government officials will go out of their way to maintain good relations with them.”
Perhaps that is why Fayyaz Solangi, the former DC West who placed that damning notice in the newspapers against Mr Brohi back in 2020, put in another notice on July 8, 2025 — five years later — in Urdu, English and Sindhi newspapers containing a grovelling apology, and stating that an enquiry had not established allegations of land grabbing against him. An excerpt from the notice reads “…I had already apologized to him in person and directed my staff to issue corrigendum to this effect but unfortunately the same [was] not published on a timely basis and I was transferred…”
Former DC West Fayyaz Solangi’s public apology to Mr Brohi published in Dawn on July 8, 2025.
That shameful apology was a step too far, even for a severely compromised bureaucracy. Two days later, the former DC West swiftly found himself reduced to officer on special duty by the chief secretary Sindh. Mr Solangi did not respond to Dawn’s repeated requests for comment.
As for Jibrail Khan, the JUI-F local leader who ran afoul of certain political bigwigs, the intercession of his party leadership appears to have magically made the FIRs against him melt into thin air. Even though he has yet to obtain bail in all the cases, he is out of prison. The ‘system’ knows when compromise is a better closing gambit.
*Some names have been changed to protect identity.
Maps by Dawn, GIS.
All photos by author.
Header image by Radia Durrani.
Additional information by Hawwa Fazal.
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