“We need [our] plots/ villa possession as soon as possible as we are very old now, heart patients and need our property before we die. This is our hard-earned money of many years. My son, living abroad far away from families … Do you know how people live abroad in one room to save money? All [that] money, we gave to you.”

This desperate communique was sent to multiple Bahria Town officials on November 28, 2022, from an elderly lady, Noor Jahan, whose family had purchased files for five plots and a villa in Bahria Town Karachi (BTK) in 2015, for which they had paid in full by 2018. Till today, they have nothing more tangible to show for their investment than Bahria files.

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They are among the many individuals who say they were ‘allotted’ these properties outside the 16,896 acres in Malir district on which the Supreme Court in March 2019 had allowed Bahria to develop BTK. (Legally, Bahria is in no position to allot these properties at all as the land does not belong to it, but to the Sindh Board of Revenue.) That Bahria has continued to ‘allot’ properties outside this area to its investors even after the 2019 judgment indicates its long-term plans to encroach beyond it, notwithstanding the Supreme Court order.

On March 2, 2019, Bahria Town had submitted an application to the Supreme Court bench set up to implement the court’s order of May 4, 2018, which found that the developer had illegally acquired thousands of acres of land for its mammoth housing project on Karachi’s outskirts. The application, C.M.A. 1870/2019, which included Bahria’s final site plan (site plan ‘C’) of 16,896 acres for BTK, also gave an undertaking that people “who have been allotted/are entitled to be allotted plots in any precinct, which was proposed to be developed [in any area beyond site plan ‘C’] have been/shall be allotted and provided plots within the already developed [BTK] land… .” This pledge was also recorded in the verdict of the implementation bench: “[Bahria] has undertaken to adjust such allottees in 16,896 acres marked in site plan C or to compensate them in monetary terms.”

But Bahria seems to have had little intention of keeping its word. The firm continued to string along those who had invested in BTK, even as it continued to market its project. Ms Noor Jehan’s email cited above points out that “…Bahria has excess land and is selling to new investors/ dealers by new deals but not for affectees. Now, there is also a new deal coming this month for sale of new plots, but not giving to old affectees since 2013… .” Similarly, a few months ago a “new deal” of “luxury farm houses” was launched in Bahria Paradise — which, as shown in maps on authorised Bahria dealers’ websites, falls entirely in Jamshoro district. No part of this district falls within the 16,896 acres.

In October 2021, 62 people with Rs213,116,908 worth of investment in BTK filed a petition in the Supreme Court alleging that Bahria was violating its undertaking to the court; 32 of these individuals were overseas Pakistanis, whose cases were taken up by the Overseas Pakistanis Foundation.

In July 2020, a group of around 40 Bahria investors had filed a similar petition. An extract from the second petition reads: “That on the one hand, the allottees are being made to suffer and wait for opportunities, in the same pieces of lands, new/ fresh schemes for further public sales being undertaken by BTK.”

Further, it rued the fact that in the “absence of time bound mechanism for monetary compensation and/ or re-allotment in Plan ‘C’ area, [Bahria is] … employing delaying tactics to avoid implementing the orders.” Elsewhere it said: “[Bahria] is attempting to forcibly accommodate the applicants/allottees in land other than the marked area of 16,896 acres… .”

Among the petitioners, most of whom the petition described as “retired senior citizens, widows, other low-paid employees and overseas Pakistanis”, is Fazeel Siddiqui, a finance manager at a company in the Middle East. “Around 2016 or so, I had booked two files in BTK’s Sports City — we say ‘files’ not ‘plots’ because very few people had actually been given plots,” he said. “After the 2019 judgment, many people panicked and sold their files at half of what they had paid. But I didn’t do that. I decided I’d pay my remaining instalments and on the basis of the court order demand that Bahria give me what I’d paid for.”

Mr Siddiqui had invested in two 250 sq yard plots in BTK’s Sports City, costing Rs3,655,000 each, for which he paid the final instalments on March 31, 2020, as per the payment schedule “so as to give Bahria no excuse for delay”.

In October 2020, he received an unsigned, unstamped letter on a Bahria letterhead announcing that those who had “fully paid up plots in Sports City and Paradise falling outside the [Supreme Court-mandated] boundary” had “been allotted plots within boundary”. But his accompanying statement of accounts still mentioned his original allotment of precinct 40. Mr Siddiqui told Dawn that this is typical of the way Bahria communicates with its investors in order to reduce its legal liability. From maps on the websites of Bahria’s authorised dealers, he was aware that Sports City almost in its entirety from precinct 34 (partially) until precinct 45 fell in deh Mole, Jamshoro — that is, outside the area allowed by the Supreme Court. When he contacted the firm, he was told over the phone that his allotment was still in precinct 40. “When I pointed out that this fell in an illegal area, they told me, ‘We were going to give you allotment and we’ve done that. Why are you asking whether it’s legal or not? You can take possession and start construction on it,’” he said. “But they’ll never put this down in writing.”

The details of petitioners included in the October 2021 petition show he was one among many in the same predicament. Investors were also given the option to surrender their original files to Bahria and take their money back. Many did that, but they say it took at least two years for them to be reimbursed — that too, only the principal amount. According to the petition filed by the investors in October 2021, post-dated cheques were handed over by Bahria to the allottees after more than a year, but they bounced repeatedly.

On a number of occasions, there have been ugly confrontations when these frustrated investors descended upon the Bahria head office in Karachi to protest. On one such occasion, an FIR (No. 421 of 2020) was filed by the company’s security supervisor against six protestors. It accused them of rioting, unlawful assembly, damage to property and intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace. These crimes are punishable by up to two years imprisonment, a fine or both.

The individuals named in the FIR were dragged through the courts and forced to incur the expense of hiring defence lawyers and posting bail. The two accused who chose to fight were ultimately acquitted by the judicial magistrate concerned; the order dated Aug 20, 2022, read: “…due to plots dispute accused persons arrived at the Bahria Town, hence ground raised by the learned counsel for accused has legal weight and Bahria are at fault and apparently the grievance of the both accused persons who are allottee had not been redressed. … Moreover, prosecution has failed to bring a trustworthy, independent, reliable and tangible evidence on record which could strengthen its case.” Four others were declared absconders and their sureties confiscated.

Clearly, Bahria’s ruthless prosecution of the case was meant to silence any other would-be protestors. But it illustrates far more than that.

“This is another example of the extraordinary level of regulatory and state capture which Bahria Town has managed, specifically in Sindh,” said lawyer Abdul Moiz Jaferii in an email response to Dawn’s questions on the issue.

“What is in essence a pyramid scheme has the executive and legislative support of the state. Bahria Town is able to rely upon the state to treat it as an extension of itself. They are claiming charges of unlawful assembly and the use of foul language which the police decided must be investigated to the fullest. It takes a judge to put an end to the farce instead of a constable practising common sense. …This only serves to expose the political party behind the executive action as a complicit party in the land grab of Bahria Town in Sindh which would not have been possible without bureaucratic assistance and political leverage every step of the way.”

A combined complaint filed with NAB on Dec 10, 2020 by about 40 Bahria investors, and individual complaints by many others in subsequent months, resulted in call-up notices to them for various dates in September 2023 — two to three years later. Despite many of them visiting the NAB head office as directed and filing their complaint in person along with an affidavit to vouch for its veracity, they say they have not heard from NAB again. The DG NAB told Dawn that NAB officers cannot comment on ongoing enquiries.

According to Mr Siddiqui, only a few among the overseas Pakistanis have been accommodated within the ‘demarcated’ area. “Most of these were people who had either paid Bahria from their overseas bank accounts or had paid their instalments into the firm’s foreign bank accounts, but only if they had made the effort to pursue their cases.” This he believes was done by Bahria in an effort to avoid legal repercussions abroad.

Another investor, Asadullah Khan, maintains that those with an “influential source, such as a brigadier or general,” got the properties they had paid for. “In each round of balloting, Bahria puts up only 30pc of plots for allotment, gives another 30pc to their authorised dealers while the rest they hold to sell as new deals when development is done and the market value goes up. Those who’d bought files earlier [when they were cheaper] are accommodated along the way. That’s always been their strategy”.

Mr Asadullah also told Dawn about how investors, disheartened by falling prices of their ‘files’ are encouraged to merge those files in another project by one of several other private builders to whom Bahria has sub-contracted the development of BTK. “We merged three files into a project by Dominion Builders, but five years later we haven’t got [the possession of] that either although we had to pay more in instalments for that and give a down payment in cash.” The petition filed by the investors says that the builders/realtors are “allegedly the undercover partners of BTLK and beneficiary of profits at cost to the public”.

Despite repeated requests, Bahria Town did not respond to questions from Dawn about the issues raised in this report.

The petition filed by those allotted land outside the 16,896 acres came up for hearing in October 2023, two years after it was filed. Unfortunately, the three-judge Supreme Court bench in its verdict on Nov 23, 2023, did not address the investors’ grievances; the other group of petitioners had also been unsuccessful in getting the relief they sought from the Supreme Court. Both sets of petitioners are now looking to file anew in the Sindh High Court.