A trader Mian Idrees stopped the convoy of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif during his protest against Rana Sanaullah Khan and his brother in law Rana Ijaz, the alleged supporters of land mafia, in Faisalabad.

ISLAMABAD: Urban and suburban Punjab is in the grip of a new fear caused by land-grabbing gangs operating with the help of land-registration authorities in more than 25 major towns.

Recent raids at the Ferozwala and Jhelum registration offices resulted in arrests and naming of the gang members within the government channels, exposing the tip of this phenomenal iceberg. The Statesmen has learnt that there are numerous ledgers awaiting investigation to uncover the extent of fraudulent practice in land transfers over the past 10-15 years.

At the Ferozwala registration office, the raids exposed more than 100 incidents where transfers were made using fake signatures of the DDORs and his staff for the gangs, preventing the rightful owners from becoming aware of the actual value of their land or the fraudulent change in its ownership.

In more than 500 complaints filed with the authorities concerned, the rightful owners challenged the land-grabbers and sought to retrieve their land through their original ownership deeds.

When these authorities were approached in Ferozwala, they said most of these applications were filed with the wrong offices and so no action could be initiated. A senior staff of the DDOR said: “Our office is where they should be filing the applications but they go to either the police or the magistrate’s office.

“Some of them have even filed them with the DCO’s office while others have written directly to the Punjab chief minister or his secretariat. These authorities have been frequently referring these applications to us for consideration, but there are members of land-grabbing gangs at our offices that disregard these applications after bringing them to the notice of the DDOR.

“They point to the ineligibility of the owner citing the laws that mandate proof of physical possession for a specified period as proof of ownership. They play on such loopholes so efficiently that their tricks are unbeatable and that is what scares the people in the periphery, and even in the heart of cities where parcels of land lie unused for long periods of time.”

His senior officials, when approached, said these gangs were too powerful to name and had high profile connections, including the police. The recent judicial activism did not scare them as they were too well-connected and efficient in their operation. When the courts take action by ordering in property related litigations to expel the land-grabber, the police delays action under higher orders.

The lawful owners, considering litigation too expensive, mostly lose heart and are forced by the land-grabbers to legally sell their land to them at a fraction of its market value. Most of the villagers on the Lahore-Sheikhupura and Sheikhupura-Gujranwala Road, where the land-grabbing activity is most rife in the Punjab province, told The Statesmen that the gang leaders cruise the area in expensive vehicles with gunmen that are frequently seen knocking at the doors of applicants to intimidate them.

They force applicants to declare in the presence of the villagers that the encroached land was being sold and registration was completed at the DDOR offices. Visitors frequenting the offices in Ferozwala, Gujranwala and Jhelum told The Statesmen that in most cases the court stay does not prove effective against the grabbers, who defy it with contemptuous displays of physical and official power. The rightful landowners concede and cut their losses by accepting whatever price the land-grabbers offer.