KOHAT, May 7: The municipal authorities have demolished the 120-year-old jail building to construct a shopping plaza despite clear status quo orders of the Peshawar High Court following a suit filed by claimants of the land, the descendants of former king of Afghanistan Ahmed Shah Abdali (Durrani).

The claim is queer and interesting because if the court decides in the favour of the claimants, the property worth billions of rupees situated right in the heart of the city would go to the Durrani family.

The claimants had also asked the court that as most of the city area was owned by them the Kohat city should be shifted to its original site which is about 5,000-year-old and situated 12 kilometres north east of here near the caves of kings Aad and Samud. If this was not possible they should be given land somewhere else which is equivalent to the price of their original claim.

The claimants, Ayub Khan Durrani, Nasir Mahmood Durrani and others, who are the direct decedents of the former king of Afghanistan, Ahmed Shah Abdali Sadozai, who ruled Kohat in the 19th century had filed the claim suit over the property owned by the army and the civil administration after the former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif announced that all those who had valid documents of land which was owned by their forefathers could claim their land.

Even if their cases were time-barred. Before that the law prohibited such claims if the property had remained unclaimed for more than 100 years.

The Peshawar High Court declared the property including the police lines, Kohat Fort, the headquarters of the army’s IXth division, District Hospital building, Government High School No. 2, Kohat, all the offices of the municipal committee, football ground, MP checkpost, Kohat springs and the land owned by the agriculture department, all measuring 972 kanals and had barred the concerned authorities from undertaking any construction work or sale of this land.

The PHC judge, Justice Qazi Ehsanullah Qureshi, in his order of April 22, 2002 had given four months to the lower court and the military and civil authorities to produce ownership documents if any in support their occupation of the said property. So far, during the three years continuous trial the respondents had failed to produce any documents in support of their claim over the land.

They have taken the plea that as the property is running in their hands for the last hundred of years or so it was their adding that the government had spent millions of rupees during that period on these buildings.

The respondents in the case are the federal government through secretary of defence, Islamabad, military estate officer, Kohat, executive officer, Cantt Board Kohat, government of NWFP through secretary local bodies, Peshawar, administrator municipal committee Kohat, chief officer, MC Kohat, secretary agriculture, NWFP, director agriculture department, Kohat, secretary NWFP health department, divisional health officer, medical superintendent Liaquat Memorial Hospital, Kohat, secretary home and tribal affairs, IGP, NWFP, federal land commission, Islamabad, secretary auqaf, NWFP, deputy commissioner, Kohat with powers of collector, secretary communication and works department, NWFP, administrator district council, Kohat, principal government high school No.2 Kohat, chief secretary NWFP, secretary board of revenue, NWFP.

On the other hand the police, military and civil authorities at a meeting with the claimants had offered them few shops and buildings in the town and asked them to vacate the suit.

So far the claimants had refused the offer and were eying the whole land which is roughly 30 per cent of the Kohat city.