LAHORE, Aug 16: A pre-partition building along Ravi Road is likely to be grounded shortly to raise a multi-storey plaza there by an ‘influential’ tenant. Spreading over an area of 3.5 kanals or so, Muhammadi Building was raised outside Taxali Gate by Nawab Ghulam Jilani of Bahawalpur in the 1930s.

The Nawab used to stay at the place during his visits to Lahore till the late 1940s when he decided to create a trust and hand over the control of his property at 146-Ravi Road to it.

The aim of the philanthropist was to accommodate, for the time being, the people who had come here from across the border after partition and had no shelter in Pakistan and later for charitable purposes.

The three-storey building accommodated some 70 or so such families at that time, but many of them later left and the people who had come to Lahore from far-off areas of Punjab in search of livelihood occupied the place.

A plaque on the left wall of the veranda that follows the main gate of the building is still intact, thanking the then chief minister Shahbaz Sharif and Water and Sanitation Agency (Wasa) deputy chairman Bilal Yaseen for launching uplift schemes.

A banner displayed on the second floor of the building reads: “The property has been a registered Muslim waqf property. It cannot either be sold or demolished. No one can use it without the prior permission to the district coordination officer of Lahore.”

Some men who claimed to be employees of one Haji Asghar Mughal said that he had purchased the property from Sadiq Jilani, an heir of the late Nawab Ghulam Jilani, some four years ago.

A bearded man sitting in the room adjacent to the veranda that follows the main gate told this reporter that Haji Asghar planned to demolish the structure and build a multi-storey plaza here. “But some five tenants are not vacating the place,” he added while refusing to give any further details and advising this reporter to leave the place.

Three tenants told this reporter that Haji Asghar had come to the building as a tenant in a portion some five years ago. After a year or so, his men announced that they had purchased the property and all tenants should vacate the place.

They managed to get the water supply and sewage systems severed after refusal by many tenants to do so. “We have been regularly paying rent to the government. The illegal occupants attempted to get the electricity supply disconnected, but we moved a court that restrained them from doing so.”

District Coordination Officer Mian Ijaz was not available for a comment, but his staff said the plot No 146 at Ravi Road was a trust property.

“We have displayed the banner there, and if someone still claims to have purchased it, he’ll be dealt with according to law that clearly states that a trust property cannot be utilised for any purpose other than the one specified at the time of its creation by the philanthropist,” maintained the official.—Text by Zaheer Mahmood Siddiqui and photo by Tariq Mahmood.