THE Bahria Town case which remained in the headlines for over a year is now out of the spotlight. Apparently, the penalty imposed by the Supreme Court on Bahria Town, Karachi, was for their role in acquiring illegal government land.

Interestingly, now everyone has lost interest in the case. The Supreme Court, the media and the government do not seem interested in finding out the fate of the decision of the apex court. We, the thousands of overseas and local investors in Bahria Town, Karachi, who were sold plots in the illegal land, still receive notices for payment of such plots.

In these notices there is a warning that if the instalments are not paid, the property would be cancelled, while the penalty is accumulating on a daily basis. I believe this is a blatant mockery of the Supreme Court’s judgement.

The very land which was declared illegal and around which a partition wall has been erected is now being shown under Bahria ownership and investors are being made to pay. This is the height of despair and disappointment when the publicised judgement of the highest court is being openly flouted.

The penalty on Bahria Town is being extracted from the investors either by intimidating them or by luring them into exchange with fake new building projects.

The Supreme Court is requested to do some fact-checking on the aforementioned information. Once this is done, the magnitude of earlier misappropriation by Bahria Town, Karachi, will be dwarfed.

Name withheld on request

Bahrain

Published in Dawn, July 22nd, 2019