KARACHI, Jan 14: The Sindh Home Department is trying to protect one of its influential officials, who had managed to get his father buried in a protected graveyard in violation of the relevant law, it is learnt.

According to sources, the official, Ghazanfar Qadri, had got his father, Barkat Qadri, buried in the Ghulam Shah Kalhoro Graveyard in Hyderabad. The graveyard is a site protected under the Antiquities Act 1975 that prohibits such activities at any protected site and prescribes prison terms and heavy fines for violators.

The sources said that the Archaeology Department officials present at the scene had intervened to stop the bereaved from burying the body, and had also approached the area police. However, police not only let the burial take place but facilitated it by forcing the Archaeology Department officials into their mobile van and keeping them till the process was completed.

The sources said that the Archaeology Department took up the case with the Home Department and the latter instituted an inquiry, which revealed that some other bodies had also been buried in the same graveyard in the recent past. For instance, ADIG Saleh Qadri, DSP Altaf Hussain Qadri and Amir Ali Qadri of the Sindh Agriculture University, Tando Jam, had also buried their mother, Malkan Begum, wife of late Bux Ali Qadri (a retired SP), in the graveyard a few years back.

Responding to Dawn’s queries on Sunday, Additional Home Secretary Asif Haider Shah, who is conducting the inquiry, said that he had almost completed the probe and would be submitting the report within a week. The Archaeology Department’s Sindh-Balochistan chief, Qasim Ali Qasim, told this reporter that the inquiry had been running into fourth month now although it was supposed to be completed in 15 days.

He said that his department had also raised the issue when the Qadri brothers had undertaken the illegal burial. Since no action had been taken at that time, more people have resorted to violating the Act by burying their dead in the graveyard, he added.