HYDERABAD: A case was registered against a contractor for destroying antiquity after culture department officials mishandled preservation work of Pucca Qila’s facade of the main gate and its fortification walls, leading to its complete destruction.

The fort’s facade had caved in amid dismantling work by labourers. A video went viral on Saturday, revealing the demolition work at the fort’s gate. Labourers were using sledgehammers to demolish its fortification wall as per their usual labour work of demolition at any construction site. Nobody noticed or stopped them. The labourers were standing on the right portion of the wall for demolition.

Sindh culture department officials had initially claimed that the “facade has collapsed during conservation work and apparently some negligence is seen on the part of contractors”. No scaffolding was seen under the arch of the gate though some existed on one side of the wall.

Before carrying out the work at the fort — perhaps for the first time in recent past — required protocols were not followed despite the size of the population living inside the fort. People’s movement does affect conservation work as well. “Had we been properly consulted for conservation exercise together with the department, we might have come up with some proper plan to support culture officials,” said Hyderabad DC Fuad Soomro.

Report of the inquiry team that visited the site on Friday is awaited

Sindh Culture DG Manzoor Kanasro said on Saturday that Karim Lashari, executive engineer, had been suspended as he was supposed to supervise the work assigned to the contractor. He conceded that the contractor was required to remove/preserve a layer from the wall/gate alone to determine the extent of the development in the fortification wall and facade of the main gate. “On the contrary, labourers started demolition work,” he said.

He added that an inquiry was now under way and a team led by archaeology engineer Tanvir Ahmed had visited the site on Friday. “The team’s report is awaited,” he said.

The case against the contractor was registered on a complaint of a lower-grade employee of the culture department Hyderabad at the Fort police station. Mohammad Waseem mentioned 19(1) of the Antiquity Act 1975 and sections 427 and 34 of the PPC in his application for the registration of the FIR.

He said Waliullah Bhutto and his son Saddam Bhutto, both contractors, had been busy in “repair work of Pucca Qilla for two months”. He said when they started work on the main gate of the fort, senior archaeology officer Naseem Jalbani directed Saddam Bhutto to first carry out repair work on one side of the fort and then start it on the other side of the wall.

He said he was present at the site with site attendant Mohammad Khurram and noticed that labourers of petty contractor Saddam Bhutto were demolishing the walls on both side of the gate. “I reminded Saddam Bhutto of directives of Ms Jalbani, but he continued the work and thus the gate caved in at 12 noon,” he said.

The FIR’s content is in sharp contrast with what Hyderabad’s archaeology official Ms Sindhu Chandio stated on Thursday following the incident. She claimed that the district administration had not provided her department with required support or assistance during the “conservation work” despite her repeated requests to ADC Qaim Numai and assistant commissioner Mutahir Wattoo.

Administration officials, including the Hyderabad DC, had dismissed her argument saying “work on the fort was taken in hand by culture officials without discussing it with administration threadbare with a roadmap”.

“We feel a mess has been unnecessarily created by the department. When experts like Ali Hyder Gadahi, who worked on Umerkot fort’s preservation, are available, their services were not hired,” said a culture department official. While the team, he said, now included assistant archaeological engineer Sarfaraz Jatoi, who is posted at the Makli necropolis, was not consulted.

A Jan 7, 2021 letter seen by Dawn — and confirmed by DG Kanasro — written by resident engineer Nadeem Manzoor Shah to the director of Pucca Qila, said “the main entrance gate of Pucca Fort with defence wall is tilted 3 to 4 degrees outside and currently it is in bad/dangerous condition for public. In the account of repairing/renovation/preservation of the mentioned particular point, we have to demolish main entrance gate with defence wall and re-construct it with same type of material, shape and theme”.

On one side of this letter, a note of the director says: “Constitute committee and give recommendations”. But this committee was not formed by the department.

Sindh Culture Minister Syed Sardar Shah has earlier said that the contractor’s company had been blacklisted.

Published in Dawn, September 5th, 2021