NO individual or organisation pronounced guilty of a crime should be able to profit from it.

Recent developments in the Bahria Town Karachi case present a situation where the possibility of precisely such a travesty of justice can arise.

On Wednesday, the Sindh government submitted an application to the Supreme Court, asking that the amount due from Bahria Town as settlement for 16,896 acres of government land, illegally acquired in district Malir for its housing project in Karachi, be deposited in the provincial account.

In March, the Supreme Court’s implementation bench accepted the real estate developer’s offer to pay Rs460bn over seven years in order to acquire the rights to the land.

The Sindh government in its application assured the apex court it would use the money for its development projects in a transparent manner under a committee appointed by the chief minister.

Some days ago, the federal government filed a similar application, except this one asked that the money be deposited in its public account. A tussle seems to be shaping up between the centre and the Sindh government: after all, Rs460bn — nearly $3bn — is nothing to sneeze at.

While Sindh appears to have a justifiable claim to proceeds from the settlement of land within its jurisdiction, it is instructive to revisit the Supreme Court’s May 4, 2018 verdict. The judgement took several government bodies to task for colluding with Bahria in its wholesale theft of state land; for instance, it denounced the Malir Development Authority’s role as “a brazen betrayal of the trust of the state and the people” and that of the provincial government as a “collaborator”. In short, it made no bones about what it described as a “backdoor understanding” between Bahria and the relevant authorities. Therefore, if the court does give the money to Sindh, it must ensure an ironclad monitoring mechanism so that the funds can be transparently disbursed, in part to investors, and for various development projects.

The question as to where the money is spent merits careful consideration.

In 2015, the Sindh government earmarked over 14,000 acres in Malir for low-cost housing. Instead, as we now know, many of its functionaries immersed themselves in facilitating a for-profit housing project. Giving concrete shape to those ‘planned’ low-housing schemes, of which there is a dire shortage all across the country, thus seems a logical option.

Lastly, amid all the talk of third-party interest — meaning the investors in BTK — in the subject land, the rights of the indigenous communities who have lived there for generations have gone virtually unacknowledged. Their assent was neither sought nor freely given in the ‘sale’ of their small patches of agricultural land, and they must be adequately compensated. However, one may well ask, what is fair compensation for being driven from one’s land that provided both shelter and livelihood?

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2019