Muzaffargarh: Public Interest Case of Officials Corruption Awaiting Justice for Three Decades

In an out­stand­ing case of offi­cial cor­rup­tion, local gov­ern­ment offi­cials and big­wigs in Dis­trict Muzaf­far­garh have been involved in mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing land rev­enue worth hun­dreds of mil­lions of rupees. The rev­enue being pock­et­ed comes from thou­sands of acres of land meant for pub­lic wel­fare donat­ed by Late Kora Khan under waqf sys­tem in late Nine­teenth Cen­tu­ry.

Muzaf­far Khan Magsi has been fight­ing this case in Supreme Court on behalf of cit­i­zens of Muzaffa­garh for more than three decades for prop­er uti­liza­tion of waqf land accord­ing to Kora Khan’s tes­ta­ment. He told this scribe that on 5 Octo­ber, 1894 Sar­dar Kora Khan Jatoi reg­is­tered his ten thou­sand acre land for the pub­lic wel­fare through a tes­ta­ment. Muzaf­far Khan said that this land was main­ly ded­i­cat­ed to the edu­ca­tion of those cit­i­zens who could not afford.

He fur­ther added “this land has been under the admin­is­tra­tion of Muzaf­far­garh dis­trict for more than a hun­dred years and the dis­trict coun­cil offi­cials are uti­liz­ing this land as a tool for polit­i­cal bribery. The output/revenue of the land is divid­ed among cor­rupt offi­cials and among the con­trac­tors who secure the con­tract for the land against actu­al mar­ket price. Com­plaints have been reg­is­tered before Pun­jab gov­ern­ment a num­ber of times but to no avail.”

Muzaf­far con­tin­ued “the actu­al annu­al income of this high­ly fer­tile land sit­u­at­ed in five rivers’ delta is more than fifty crore rupees as per cur­rent mar­ket prices. But the dis­trict coun­cil offi­cials allot this land to their rel­a­tives and friends at very low prices. Even some con­trac­tors do not pay a sin­gle pen­ny, for instance in 1990s a con­trac­tor named Ahmed Has­san had been farm­ing 300 acre for more than thir­ty years and the due of land on him was sev­en­teen hun­dred thou­sand rupees but he did not pay and all of the mon­ey was ‘writ­ten off’ (write-off is the act of cre­at­ing deb­it pay­ment against the cred­it and vice-ver­sa, to nul­li­fy the trans­ac­tion). The irony of the fate is that the same land was again allot­ted to him.

The lawyer said that beside these cor­rupt prac­tices and mis­han­dling of the land the peo­ple of dis­trict even do not know where the min­i­mal amount obtained from the con­trac­tors goes. The dis­trict coun­cil offi­cials have been swal­low­ing this amount for hun­dred years with­out any audit. He said that the enor­mous wealth of late Kora Khan is being uti­lized against his tes­ta­ment and wish­es. Even the few edu­ca­tion­al stipends offi­cial­ly award­ed on year­ly basis from Kora Khan Trust go to the wealthy. For instance in Kora Khan Pub­lic School the poor of the area sel­dom get admis­sion.

Late Sar­dar Kora Khan Bahadur belonged to Jatoi Tribe of Muzaf­far­garh and was a mem­ber of chief­tain fam­i­ly. Unlike oth­er feu­dal lords of South­ern Pun­jab he was a kind heart­ed, great phil­an­thropist, gift­ed soul and always ready to lend a hand to the needy and oppressed class­es of the soci­ety. Sar­dar Kora Khan Jatoi was con­tem­po­rary of great Mus­lim schol­ars Jamal-ud-din Afghani and Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, and was impressed by their ser­vices to Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ty of Hin­dus­tan, espe­cial­ly in the field of edu­ca­tion. He had thou­sands of acre agri­cul­tur­al land in Muzaf­far­garh and Rajan­pur but had no heir. So, instead of bequeath­ing or gift­ing his land to his extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers or rel­a­tives, he ded­i­cat­ed ten thou­sand acre fer­tile land to the wel­fare of the poor peo­ple of Muzaf­far­garh. Unfor­tu­nate­ly after his death all of his prop­er­ty which was meant for people’s wel­fare and edu­ca­tion fell in the hands of cor­rupt gov­ern­ment offi­cials and land grab­bers. The cor­rupt offi­cials have been using this waqf (char­i­ta­ble trust) prop­er­ty for their per­son­al gains and polit­i­cal ends.

Ghaz­an­fer Lund, a cit­i­zen of Muzaf­far­garh, said that if the income of Kora Khan Trust and prop­er­ty would have been uti­lized in a fair and trans­par­ent way there would have been no illit­er­ate in the whole dis­trict. The actu­al income of Kora Khan ‘ded­i­cat­ed prop­er­ty’ is more than enough to run a num­ber of col­leges and a uni­ver­si­ty in the dis­trict. He said that due to cor­rupt, inef­fi­cient and slow judi­cial sys­tem the case of tremen­dous pub­lic inter­est is pend­ing for decades. The last hear­ing relat­ed to the case was dur­ing the tenure of Jus­tice Saj­jad Ali Shah and after lapse of twen­ty years the hear­ing was called by Supreme Court in Jan­u­ary 2015. He demand­ed that all legal hin­drances should be elim­i­nat­ed imme­di­ate­ly. He fur­ther sug­gest­ed that the ded­i­cat­ed land for wel­fare pur­pos­es should be allot­ted to Pun­jab Seed Cor­po­ra­tion on cur­rent mar­ket rates. He fur­ther demand­ed that the Sar­dar Kora Khan Pub­lic School should be free for the poor com­mu­ni­ty.