LAHORE: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz lawmaker Afzal Nadeem Khokhar was arrested from the Supreme Court’s Lahore registry premises Tuesday on land grabbing charges.
Police said that Khokhar was arrested for illegally taking into possession 34 marla land of a citizen, Tariq Mahmood, a few years back.
“Khokhar has built his home on the grabbed land,” stated an FIR registered by Mahmood. “I am giving lawyer Fayyaz Ahmed the authority to fight the case as I am residing in London right now.”
Khokhar was arrested immediately after he left the courtroom during a hearing of the case earlier Tuesday.
On December 15, the Supreme Court of Pakistan had issued orders to put names of Afzal Khokhar and his brother Saiful Malook Khokhar on the Exit Control List (ECL).
The orders were issued by a two-member bench, headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, at the Lahore registry on the suo motu notice of as many as 22 encroachments on land owned by Lahore Development Authority (LDA) in different parts of Lahore.
The chief justice had directed the Khokhar brothers to submit their property documents before the court.
“It’s better if you give the grabbed property back to the widows and overseas Pakistanis,” CJ Nisar had told MPA Saiful Mulook Khokhar. “If the grabbing is proven I won’t spare you. Everyone knows I do what I say.”
The chief justice had then directed the police officials and LDA to recover the alleged land grabbed by the Khokhar brothers.
Published in Daily Times, December 26th 2018.