FAISALABAD: An em­bez­zle­ment of mil­lions of ru­pees al­leg­ed­ly com­mit­ted by the Jaranwala teh­sil­dar, naib teh­sil­dar and an­oth­er of­fi­cial by sell­ing hun­dreds of trees and wheat and cot­ton yield has been de­tec­ted.

A law-en­force­ment agen­cy (LEA) con­duc­ted the in­qui­ry and found evi­dence of cor­rup­tion. It pro­posed con­sti­tu­tion of a com­mit­tee on April 30 last to fur­ther probe the case but Jaranwala Assistant Commissioner Aamir Shahzad in­stead got reg­is­tered a case (on May 13) against Sarwar who had ac­quired the land in ques­tion on ‘su­per­dari’.

Mr Shahzad, while de­ny­ing the con­tents of the agen­cy re­port, told Dawn that it lacked his de­part­ment’s ver­sion and the mat­ter was un­fair­ly in­ves­ti­ga­ted. He said pat­wari Shabbir Jutt had been sus­pen­ded from serv­ice and fine had been im­posed on the vi­o­la­tor. The land had been re­trieved, he said while de­ny­ing any of his sub­or­di­nates was in­volved in cor­rup­tion.

Sources told Dawn that an in­ves­ti­ga­tion had been in­i­ti­ated by a LEA on the com­plaints that Jaranwala rev­e­nue of­fi­cials had sold trees and crops, caus­ing loss of mil­lions to the na­tion­al kit­ty.

It tran­spired that on Aug 11, 2011, Ghulam Muhammad of Chak 105-GB (Jaranwala) was ex­pro­pri­ated from his land -- 348 ka­nal and four mar­la -- on the or­ders of the then ad­di­tion­al com­mis­sion­er. The land had crops of rice on 14 ka­nal, sug­ar­cane (five ka­nal) and American cot­ton (26 ka­nal).

The land was hand­ed over on ‘su­per­dari’ to Muhammad Sarwar, lum­ber­dar of Chak 105-GB, on stip­u­la­tion/con­di­tion that he would look af­ter the stand­ing Kharif crop till its yield and then in­ti­mate the high­er-ups for auc­tion.

The re­port men­tioned Sarwar and care­tak­er of the leased state land, in con­niv­ance with Jaranwala’s as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er, teh­sil­dar, naib teh­sil­dar and oth­er of­fi­cials of the rev­e­nue de­part­ment, ap­pro­pri­ated the yield of lu­cra­tive crops and dealt a blow to the gov­ern­ment.

The in­qui­ry re­port said the land had 400 flour­ish­ed and shady trees which were cut down by Sarwar, teh­sil­dar Yahya, naib teh­sil­dar Mohammad Yousaf, qa­no­goh Mian Akram with ac­tive sup­port by AC Amir Shahzad. The trees were sold with­out per­mis­sion and in vi­o­la­tion of law.

On April 27 last, these of­fi­cials along with Sarwar har­ves­ted the wheat crop and dis­trib­uted 600 maunds of it among them­selves. This act caused a loss of Rs720,000 to the gov­ern­ment. Thirty acres have been set aside for fur­ther har­vest­ing.

The re­port men­tioned that a num­ber of Chak dwell­ers had sub­mit­ted ap­pli­ca­tions to the high­er-ups to draw their at­ten­tion to­wards the is­sue but to no avail.

Sources said the agen­cy of­fi­cials ex­pec­ted of a com­mit­tee to get back the pub­lic mon­ey but the AC got reg­is­tered a case against Sarwar with the Saddar po­lice sta­tion on May 13. It was men­tioned in the FIR that ‘crime’ had tak­en place on 11 Aug, 2011.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted with the po­lice, the AC said Sarwar had sold crops and trees from the leased land with­out per­mis­sion of au­thor­i­ties. He said the state land meas­ur­ing 348 ka­nal was re­sumed in fa­vour of state on Aug 11, 2011 in com­pli­ance with an or­der of ad­di­tion­al com­mis­sion­er (rev­e­nue).

He said Mohammad Asif of the same Chak had sub­mit­ted a com­plaint to the DCO, stat­ing that Sarwar had sold out the stand­ing crops and cul­ti­va­ted the land with­out any au­thor­i­ty. The same man had al­so re­moved 400 trees from the land with­out seek­ing per­mis­sion.

The AC said the com­plaint had been for­war­ded to him on April 9 and a rev­e­nue of­fi­cer de­pu­ted to in­quire in­to the mat­ter.

Published in Dawn, May 23rd, 2014