kARACHI: Police on Tuesday finally registered a criminal case against the builder of Nasla Tower, officials of the Sindh Building Control Authority, Sindhi Muslim Cooperative Housing Society and the plot owner for helping, facilitating and ignoring the illegal construction of the multi-storey residential building on Sharea Faisal, which is being demolished on the orders of the apex court.

The FIR was lodged on behalf of the state and it carried eight different sections of the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) ranging from fraud and cheating to illegal actions of government officers and criminal breach of trust by public servants.

Not a single official, builder named in FIR

However, only one person — Abdul Qadir who owns the plot in question — was named in the FIR and remaining suspects were nominated with their designations as their names were not part of the document.

It said Mr Qadir in connivance with the officials of the SBCA, Master Plan Department (MPD) and SMCHS had managed to encroach 341 yards of the service road and attach it with the original plot.

Only on Monday, the Supreme Court had ordered the authorities to lodge an FIR against SBCA officials, including its director general.

The FIR says the plot of Nasla Tower is 780 square yards in the SMCHS and the society had allotted 780 square yards to the owner/builder, Abdul Qadir, who — in collusion with his construction partners and officials from SMCHS, SBCA, MPD and other departments — had erected Nasla Tower on 1,121 square yards — illegally building on 341 square yards of a service road — and sold flats and shops to people.

Responding to a query, SSP-East Qamar Raza Jiskani told Dawn that the SP Investigation had been tasked with directly supervising the probe that had attracted a national interest after the Supreme Court’s order. Replying to another question about no names directly mentioned in the FIR except the owner of the plot, he said the matters was ‘too old’ and it would now take time to find out the people at different offices and positions who had actually granted the permission and helped construction of the illegal building on the plot.

“So we have kept the scope of the probe and the FIR quite wide,” said SSP Jiskani. “The FIR has been drafted and lodged with all due care mentioning each and every single office and position which possibly had facilitated Nasla Tower one way or the other. Now during course of the probe, the names would start emerging which would be incorporated in the FIR. The SP investigation has been asked to directly supervise the case and its probe. It should not be handled like regular case.”

An FIR at the Ferozabad police station has been lodged under Sections 161 (public servant taking gratification other than legal remuneration in respect to an official act), 167 (public servant framing an incorrect document with intent to cause injury), 218 (public servant framing incorrect record or writing with intent to save person from punishment or property from forfeiture), 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 409 (criminal breach of trust by public servant, or by banker, merchant or agent), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) and 447 (criminal trespass) of the PPC.

Published in Dawn, December 29th, 2021