ISLAMABAD, June 13: Lawyers defending property tycoon Malik Riaz in 62 cases in local courts have been warned by the bar associations of Rawalpindi division that they would lose their professional membership if they did so.

Resolutions to the effect passed by the Lahore High Court Bar Rawalpindi and the bar associations of Rawalpindi and Attock on Wednesday also warned that the doors of the premises of the bar associations would be shut on them.

Malik Riaz himself is the complainant in four civil suits about land disputes pending in the courts of Rawalpindi while he is facing 57 criminal and civil cases regarding land grabbing or company matters in the Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench and in the sessions courts of Rawalpindi.

Zahid Hussain Bokhari, the newly engaged lawyer of the tycoon in the alleged corruption case of Arslan Iftikhar, said that while it was the prerogative of the bar to allow or ban the entry of a person, a lawyer performs his professional responsibilities in the court and does not indulge in politics in arguing case of any nature.

According to the Punjab prosecution, in the LHC Rawalpindi bench the property tycoon is facing cases of land grabbing, land fraud and appeals against the decisions of the trial courts mostly in land related cases.

In an alleged fraud case registered in 2009 and involving 1,401 kanals of land near Rawat, an anti corruption court of Rawalpindi issued arrest warrants for Malik Riaz and his son Ali Riaz in October 2011 after the anti corruption establishment (ACE) of Punjab submitted the evidence against the tycoon and his associates.

The tycoon challenged the orders of the anti-corruption judge in the LHC in early November 2011 but when the prosecution pointed out that unless the tycoon surrendered before the court he could not seek any relief the authorities in National Accountability Bureau (NAB) the apex anti corruption organization of the federal government on November 21 transferred his case from ACE to NAB.

The ACE then refused to hand over the record to NAB and promptly filed a petition in the LHC and alleged that Malik Riaz wanted to transfer the land fraud case to NAB because the tycoon believes a favorable decision in the apex anti corruption organization.

Perhaps, this was the first case in which Justice Mazhar Ali Naqvi summoned the property tycoon in November 2011. During the hearing of the case, Aitzaz Ahsan counsel for the tycoon, claimed that the Punjab government dragged his client into the land fraud case.

The criminal cases against the tycoon are related to the land disputes, clashes of the employees of Bahria Town with the officials of government departments as well as with the rival groups.A famous criminal case registered against the management of Bahria Town and son of the tycoon Ali Riaz in car drag case is also pending in the sessions court of Rawalpindi.

After an out of court settlement, the accused were granted bail by the court and the court also deleted section 302 (related to intentional murder) of Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) against the accused persons, but the prosecution department of government of Punjab filed a review against the deletion of section 302 and contended that the negligence of driver as well as the organization of the car race caused the death of five spectators therefore, section 302 fully attracted in the case.

In another case, in which the victim, Raheel Yousafzai, a practicing lawyer, alleged that Bahria Town had advertised the DHA valley home scheme at Kallar Sayedan Road of Rawalpindi without acquiring the land from the owners. He claimed that currently, Bahria Town owns just 25 per cent of the total land of the scheme but had sold all the proposed plots to the costumers.

Now the management on one hand is confronting with the original affected persons and on the other hand, the people who purchased the files from Bahria Town are now demanding the return of their deposited amount, he added.

Qaiser Mehmood, legal adviser of Bahria Town told Dawn that the cases related to Bahria Town are the routine ones and it should be viewed in the broader scenario adding that “we are corporate company and it is not unusual if we are facing cases of different nature in the court”.

He, however, said that the matter regarding restricting the entry of the Malik Riaz counsels on the premises of the bar associations would be taken up with the respective bars.