MULTAN, Aug 18: The tehsil municipal administration may fail to clean the city of encroachments allegedly due to the influential ‘encroachment mafia’.

The TMA had launched the drive with tall claims to remove encroachments from city roads and markets for a smooth flow of traffic. The task was assigned to tehsil officer (regulation) Khwaja Anwar who according to the TMA staff took the matter with missionary zeal and started laying hand on all people guilty of encroaching upon the state land.

However, the tehsil officer and his team were attacked and beaten up by some transporters and their henchmen on April 30 last during the drive to remove encroachments from the general bus stand. Khwaja Anwar had to be hospitalized for several weeks due to a head injury.

It was said that the attack was pre-planned with the backing of a responsible functionary of the district government who had stakes in legal and illegal income of the bus stand. A case was registered against the assailants and the chargesheet presented in the anti-terrorism court, but all the accused were bailed out.

The tehsil officer again launched the drive after being recovered from his injuries a few weeks ago. But, last week during a clean-up operation on Suraj Kund Road, an angry mob comprising shopkeepers attacked and manhandled the team.

The TMA land officer lodged the case with Kutabpur police against several people, including three nominated as Niaz Bhutta, Saqlain Bhutta and Maddu Butt. Niaz, a councillor of the area union council, was accused of instigating the mob to attack the TMA men.

Sources in the TMA said the political influentials, including heads of some local bodies, were pressurizing for a patch-up with the assailants in both the cases. They said a group of district and tehsil council members was exerting pressure on the district Nazim and the city tehsil Nazim to force the TMA officials to withdraw the cases.

They said under the circumstances, the anti-encroachment drive had almost come to a halt as the officials were not only disappointed with the role of local body representatives, but also reluctant to take the challenge without proper security measures.