RAWALPINDI, Jan 11: The Special Branch of the police has stepped into the ongoing land dispute between the caretakers of religious seminary and the district administration to prevent further escalation of tension, it has been learnt.

Jamia Farooqia Mehria Faizabad and the Rawalpindi administration have been at loggerheads over a piece of land on which a public school is functioning.

Custodians of the religious seminary have displayed huge banners along Murree Road against the alleged illegal occupation of mosque land by the government. The area people have also been convinced of the “encroachment”.

The Punjab government had constructed a high school on the land, though the documents stated that the land was owned by the seminary caretakers.

Now the police have warned both the parties to avoid confrontation, and asked the administrators of Jamia Farooqia to refrain from distributing pamphlets against the district administration.

The seminary administrator, Raja Ashfaq Kiani, told Dawn on Sunday that a senior official of the Special Branch visited his mosque and enquired about the issue in detail.

Mr Kiani vowed that the land would not be surrendered to the Punjab government, asserting that he was the legal owner of the land on which the government had constructed a school.

“The school is without educational facilities and does not seem to be a school. But the government is not shifting the school to another place because the authorities want to hang on to the land,” Mr Kiani added.

He said the education department had failed to prove the ownership of the land, adding that the seminary land was forcefully occupied. He regretted that the Punjab government was silent over the issue.