KARACHI: Rangers personnel in balaclavas on Monday paid a ‘visit’ to the head office of the Sindh Building Control Authority, held a meeting with its chief and collected ‘relevant details’ about unlawful allotment of land and illegal construction on encroached areas in Karachi during the past decade.

Television channels flashed the news of a Rangers ‘raid’ on the SBCA office when several vehicles of the paramilitary force entered the premises of the Civic Centre and cordoned it off.

However, a source in the SBCA told Dawn that a few Rangers officials held a meeting with acting SBCA chief Mumtaz Haider, who is looking after the office of the director general in the absence of Manzoor Qadir who is on one-month leave from June 1.

While there is no official word both from the Rangers and SBCA about the meeting, the source said that the meeting continued for a couple of hours and the SBCA’s director of North Nazimabad Town also joined it for a brief period.

Rangers sources confirmed their meeting with the SBCA officials to get a briefing about several issues that came under the regulatory body’s mandate.

A senior official, asking not to be named, said that most of the questions focused on illegal construction activities, alleged involvement of serving and former SBCA officials in such activities and what action had been taken against them.

“It was not a raid at all,” said the official. “No one from the SBCA was grilled or detained and no object was seized.”

He replied in the affirmative when asked whether questions were related to ‘China-cutting’, illegal construction activities and land-mafia operations.

The illegal carving out of smaller residential plots, less than 120 square yards, from a big amenity plot is called ‘China-cutting’.

The official said that the meeting remained effective and hoped that such cooperation would continue in future as well.

The SBCA source said that the Rangers officials would visit the SBCA again on Tuesday for a follow-up meeting. “The agenda has not been shared with the officials who would be attending the meeting.”

The Monday action at the SBCA did not come as complete surprise as the paramilitary force had already hinted at expanding its actions from fighting regular crime and terrorism to other illegal activities that feed “activities of criminal, gangs and terrorists”.

Last week the Rangers disclosed that more than Rs230 billion was being generated annually from the people of Karachi through extortion, smuggling of Iranian diesel, illegal water supply system and land-grabbing — the crimes that Rangers said were mainly patronised by a major political party.

The paramilitary force also claimed that part of the Rs230bn amount was being used for terrorism financing as well as decades-old gang warfare in Lyari and criminal activities across the city.

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has formed a three-member task force to ‘examine’ the Rangers report with regard to the illegal generation of the Rs230bn amount within four weeks. The task force comprises retired Justice Ghulam Sarwar Korai as chairman with retired district and sessions judge Arjun Ram K. Talreja and home secretary Mukhtiar Hussain Soomro as its members.

Published in Dawn, June 16th, 2015

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