Mirwaiz, kin among 7 booked for encroaching evacuee land; Hurriyat chairman alleges harassment | India News

SRINAGAR: Hurriyat Conference chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq Wednesday denied charges of land grab a day after J&K Police’s anti-corruption bureau (ACB) booked him, his IAS officer brother-in-law Majeed Khalil Drabu and five others for allegedly encroaching on nearly an acre of “evacuee/custodian land”, on which the duo’s Srinagar’s houses stand.
Land belonging to a person who migrated to Pakistan after Partition is considered evacuee or custodian property, and remains in the control of govt.
In the case of the Mirwaiz and Drabu, who is currently serving as Controller of Legal Metrology in J&K, the FIR registered on Tuesday claims the allotment of the landat Nigeen in Hazratbal area of Srinagar several decades ago was done in a wrongful manner in collusion with revenue officials.
According to the FIR, ACB’s preliminary inquiry revealed the land was “unlawfully allotted by the custodian department, without proper sanction and an open auction, violating established provisions”.
If the charges are proved, the land and the houses will be confiscated, sources said.
Refuting the allegation, Mirwaiz Farooq, in a statement, said the FIR was an attempt to “malign, defame and harass him”, and added that “these things will not cow me down”.
The statement claimed the ACB action was part of a “propaganda” carried out against him since 2018, “when multiple properties including of Anjuman Auqaf Jama Masjid, Anjuman Nusratul Islam and Darul-ul-Khair Mirwaiz Manzil, were all attributed to him, and later proved to be false and baseless”.
“No property at present — house or land — belongs to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in Nigeen,” the statement further said. “The residential land and house in which he lives in Nigeen was purchased and built upon by his father Mirwaiz Molvi Mohammad Farooq in 1973, the same year that Mirwaiz Umar was born. Its boundary walls are the same since that year.”
The Hurriyat chairman said if indeed it was an evacuee/custodian property, he should have been intimated about it by the authorities concerned. However, no intimation or notice regarding the land was ever sent to him, he claimed.