KARACHI:
The Provincial Anti-Corruption Court acquitted SBCA’s former director general Manzoor Kaka and other accused in the case of illegal land allotment to Nasla Tower on Thursday.
Provincial Anti-Corruption Court Judge Aminullah Siddiqui acquitted all the accused for lack of evidence.
Those acquitted include former SBCA DG Manzoor Qadir Kaka, former director Ali Mehdi Kazmi, former director Ali Ghufran, former deputy director Sami Siddiqui and Ali Zafar Jafri, among others.
The court ruled in its verdict that the prosecution failed to prove accused’s involvement in illegal allotment of land to Nasla Tower. The residential building was declared illegal and demolished on the orders of the Supreme Court.
In August 2023, the prime suspect Manzoor Qadir Kaka was sent to jail after the accountability judge cancelled his bail in the case of the illegal allotment of additional land to Nasla Tower builders. Kaka was accused of unlawfully passing the map of Nasla Tower and increasing the land of the illegal building from 700 square yards to 1,100 square yards encroaching upon the service lane on Shahra-e-Faisal near Nursery Market.
The case was registered on the orders of the Supreme Court as Kaka was SBCA DG when additional land was illegally allotted to Nasla Tower builders. Then chief justice Gulzar Ahmed had ordered demolition of Nasla Tower in an anti-encroachment case in 2021. The razing process started in November 2021 and completed in February 2022.
Former CJ Gulzar’s order to demolish the illegally constructed building caused public outcry as political parties and civil society sympathised with 44 families who became homeless. However, the builders who sold the apartments and the government officials who earned kickbacks from approving the map and allocating land of service lane continued to live a luxurious life having robbed people of their hard-earned money.
