Monday, August 1, 2011

Legal quagmire

29 July 2011 Last updated at 23:44 GMT Destroyed records on the lawn of Nowshera's Tehsil office, or office of land administration Important legal records have been left to rot outdoors in Nowshera The massive flooding of Pakistan in 2010 destroyed more than 1.5 million homes and cost $10bn in direct and indirect losses. But as the BBC's M Ilyas Khan discovers in the town of Nowshera, the floods also had a devastating impact in less obvious ways.

In 1970, two brothers cheated their only sister out of her share of the family's ancestral land near the town of Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

It was the sort of thing that happens with a depressing regularity to many women in rural parts of Pakistan.

In 2002, the daughter of the cheated woman - who by that time was dead - successfully filed a court appeal for redistribution of the property.

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Their cases are headed nowhere because the documents they have in their possession cannot be authenticated”

End Quote Mohammad Haroon Ex-president, Nowshera bar association That has led to multiple complications for Saeed Iqbal, whose father bought a portion of the land sold by one of the brothers back in 1977.

The law required him to provide paperwork so that his status as buyer of the land could be proved.

Mr Iqbal found himself metaphorically in deep water because to his misfortune the files concerned were among thousands of revenue and judicial records that were destroyed when Nowshera was submerged in last year's floods.

'Lost evidence'

"Legally, this puts Mr Iqbal at a disadvantage," says Mohammad Haroon, a lawyer and former president of the Nowshera district bar association.

"Copies of judicial documents, even if officially certified, are often challenged by litigants, and the only way to authenticate them is to produce the original record, which is lost," he says.

Nowshera district courts Large parts of Nowshera's court complex are under water

Nowshera was the first, and the hardest-hit, casualty of last year's floods - the worst for 80 years in Pakistan.

The River Kabul, which cuts through the middle of the town, overflowed its banks on both sides on the evening of 29 July 2010, inundating the entire town.

Nearly a dozen people were killed, and hundreds of homes wiped out completely.

The entire population of the town - some 100,000 people - had to relocate to relief camps or move in with friends and relatives in nearby villages.

The district administration, the police and the local judiciary took between four to six months to get back into their stride, and hiccups still persist.

The rains this year are not as relentless, but there is a constant trickle as we step into the offices of the district land administration, called Tehsil.

We are looking for Mr Iqbal's "lost evidence".

Litigants outside a court room in the Nowshera district courts Locals are desperate to stop "land grabbers" stealing their inheritance

What we find is heaps of muddied bundles of decomposed paper and cloth piled high in two dingy rooms, both full of cobwebs and, warns one official, scorpions and snakes.

Some bundles are scattered in the lawns and corridors of the premises, all dried into cakes of paper pulp mixed with mud.

These were once files of land sketches and genealogical trees of the landowners of about 160 villages of Nowshera district, the oldest of them dating from 1870.

They included original documents of all land development, inheritance as well as records of court judgements in land disputes.

'Futile battle' Continue reading the main story
There is nothing to suggest any damage has been done to the interests of the public”

End Quote Subhan Uddin District revenue officer With the loss of these files, the entire history of the area has become suspect.

Across the river, at the drenched district courts, crowds of litigants hang around in the corridors, waiting to be called in by the bailiffs for their hearings.

Mr Haroon says that literally hundreds of them are waging a futile battle.

"Their cases are headed nowhere because the documents they have in their possession cannot be authenticated," he says.

The district revenue officer, Subhan Uddin, downplays the magnitude of the loss.

"We have been able to save 95% of our records, and there is nothing to suggest that any damage has been done to the interests of the public," he says.

But from what we have seen, that is clearly not the case.

Ahmad Jan, a poor and aging government employee, says God is the only hope he has left.

His father bought some land in the 1940s, and fought a challenge to the sale deed in a court which decided in his favour in 1948.

Ahmad Jan, Ahmad Jan has put his trust in God

Mr Jan is now battling a local "land grabber" who has forcefully occupied a piece of that land.

Although Mr Jan possesses a certified copy of the 1948 court order, the original case file was destroyed in last year's floods.

Now there is no way a court can establish the physical details of his property. This has created an advantage for his opponent, experts say.

They say that as time goes by, countless cases are likely to come to light in which unscrupulous elements will deprive legal title-holders of their land.

And there is no silver lining.

Mr Haroon says the only permanent solution to this problem is a fresh exercise in land settlement.

This would require a land survey of the entire district to draw up sketches of land holdings and genealogical trees of the current owners.

Many doubt there is the administrative will, the funds and the level of competence that such an exercise would require.

The British rulers of India conducted the first land settlement in 1870, and updated the records in the 1890s and again in the 1920s. The idea was to update the records every 20 to 25 years.

But there has not been a single land settlement exercise since 1947, when Pakistan won freedom.

Few expect there will be one in the near future.

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India 'tiger Rolls' is for sale

26 July 2011 Last updated at 15:32 GMT The 1925 customised Rolls Royce The car was designed more for show than for hunting A 1925 Rolls Royce car customised with mounted guns and searchlights to hunt for tigers is to be sold in the US next month by Bonhams auction house.

The car was used by an Indian maharaja during the days of the British Raj, and is expected to sell for up to $1.6m (?1m).

It was commissioned by Umed Singh II, the maharaja of Kotah, when tiger hunting was hugely popular in India.

Maharajas were known for their high living and extravagant spending.

Many had customised cars - usually made in the US - for hunting tigers, leopards and Asiatic lions in India's forests.

Bonhams say that the car's eight-litre, six-cylinder engine with a low gearing ratio allowed "it to creep powerfully through the roughshod jungles of Rajasthan".

Correspondents say that while most tiger hunting was carried out on elephant-back, some Indian maharajahs, or "great kings" of princely states took things to the extreme.

"It was more for a show but everything would be ready and then they would then go and take this Rolls Royce up to a point or the hills and from there shoot the tiger that was already captured by their servants," Pran Nevile, a writer and expert on India's colonial history, told the Reuters news agency.

Indiscriminate hunting over the centuries has decimated India's tiger population from an estimated 40,000 animals 100 ago to about 1,700 today.

The vehicle is due to be sold in mid-August in Carmel, California.


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India activist rejects graft law

29 July 2011 Last updated at 04:18 GMT Anna Hazare with civil society members on 15 June 2011 Anti-graft activist Anna Hazare had undertaken a fast in April Indian activist Anna Hazare has rejected a proposed new anti-corruption law which has been approved by the government.

Mr Hazare said the Jan Lokpal (Citizen's Ombudsman) Bill was a "cruel joke". He said he would go on hunger strike from 16 August in protest.

The government has refused to include the prime minister and senior judiciary under the purview of the ombudsman.

India has recently been hit by a string of high-profile corruption scandals.

Civil society members, led by Mr Hazare, have been pushing the government for a strong ombudsman that will have the power to investigate corruption charges against the prime minister, senior judges and MPs, among others.

On Thursday, the government approved a draft of the law which allows citizens to to approach the ombudsman with complaints against federal ministers and bureaucrats, who are protected under India's present anti-graft laws.

But campaigners led by Mr Hazare and the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have criticised the government's decision to keep the prime minister and senior judges out of the proposed law.

"If a prime minister does something corrupt to save his seat and there is no investigation into the corruption, then what does this mean?" BJP spokesman Ravishankar Prasad said.

Mr Hazare, who went on a hunger strike in April to protest against government inaction on corruption, said the proposed law was "unconstitutional".

But federal Law Minister Salman Khurshid said the government had accepted most of the points raised by the civil society members in framing the proposed law.

Some of the recent corruption scandals to have rocked India include a multi-billion dollar alleged telecoms scam, alleged financial malpractices in connection with the Delhi 2010 Commonwealth Games and allegations that houses for war widows were diverted to civil servants.

Critics of the government say that recent scandals point to a pervasive culture of corruption in Mr Singh's administration - adding to the difficulties of a politician once seen as India's most honest.

A recent survey said corruption in India cost billions of dollars and threatened to derail growth.


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Living in fear

29 July 2011 Last updated at 09:53 GMT By Aleem Maqbool BBC News, Charsadda Internally displaced children peep through a tent used by their family at a camp for flood victims in Sir Darriyya, Charsadda, northwest Pakistan July 28, 2011. Hundreds of thousands are still in temporary shelter a year on from the floods This year's monsoon season has just started in Pakistan. In the village of Sir Darriyya, it is filling people with dread.

Exactly a year ago, residents here spoke of a huge wall of water several feet high that smashed its way through their alleyways and engulfed their homes.

It came without warning as the river nearby burst its banks.

At the time, we travelled here and saw the destruction that had been caused. We met the people who had seen loved ones carried away by the torrents.

'Frightened'

Zarseda Bibi only found her two daughters after days of searching. The bodies of Salma, 18, and Nazia, 15, had been carried more than 3km (2 miles) away.

"I think about those two girls every moment," says Zarseda.

"These last few days I have heard the rain falling and I'm frightened for my children and grandchildren," she says. "We would take them away from this place if we had the money, but we don't."

And so she waits, fully expecting disaster to come again.

Her husband and sons have rebuilt the parts of the house that were destroyed by the floods, and they have made the perimeter wall higher, but Zarseda says she barely cares in any case.

"If I had lost the house and every belonging I had, I could have coped. But there is no meaning to my life without my daughters."

This district, Charsadda, had been one of the first affected, and was an area where the waters had been at their most violent.

Huge bridges nearby were lifted from their foundations, entire villages were all but swept away, and hundreds were killed.

'Living on handouts'

As a massive rescue operation was launched here and across the north-west of the country to save those who had been stranded, the disaster was spreading.

UN's Mengesha Kebede: "A lot has been done but gaps remain"

The immense body of water created by the unprecedented rains had started to surge south, submerging vast swathes of land as it went.

"This was not an earthquake or a one-time event," says the UN's humanitarian co-ordinator in Pakistan, Mangesha Kebede.

"This is a flood which literally went downstream and destroyed livelihoods over an extended period of time. Believe it or not, some areas were still under water in February."

In the end, it is estimated that a fifth of the country was flooded, and around 18 million people affected.

Mr Kebede says that in spite of efforts that have been made to resettle the displaced by local and international organisations, there remains a huge amount of work to be done.

"For the Pakistanis who have been impacted to recover, it will require much, much more in terms of resources than are currently available, and definitely it will require time."

Children at a camp for flood victims along the road from Dadu, in Pakistan's Sindh province Nearly 20 million people were affected by the 2010 floods

But some are still waiting to see any signs of progress at all.

On the outskirts of Charsadda we find a camp full of those who were forced out of their homes by the floods.

For an entire year, Farman Ali, 46, his wife, his seven children and his 62-year-old mother have been living in a tent at the same spot.

Their house was destroyed, and in the desperation of saving themselves, they lost everything they owned.

Immediately, they became totally reliant on charity, but now that has dried up they feel in an even more degrading situation.

"The last aid we received was six months ago, when we got some basic food rations," says Farman. "Since then we've been relying on handouts from local people."

"My children frequently get sick but no doctors come to the camp any more. We just want to rebuild our house and get back to normal."

'More vulnerable'

He takes us to the site of his old home.

Only one room is still standing, but even that has walls which look to be on the verge of collapse.

In a year of desperately trying to save money to re-build his home, he has only managed to collect enough to lay the foundations for one more room. Everything else has had to go into feeding his family and buying all the new clothes and possessions they have needed to survive.

As we return to the camp where Farman Ali lives, it starts to rain. Water is already collecting on the ground close to the tents. On top of everything, Farman is expecting more flooding.

Whether it is through their grief or their homelessness or loss of livelihood, millions are still struggling to recover from last year's floods.

That, the UN warns, makes them all the more vulnerable as the new rainy season begins.

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Mumbai gunman contests sentence

29 July 2011 Last updated at 16:02 GMT Mumbai gunman, identified as Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab Qasab was found guilty of mass murder The sole surviving gunman from the deadly 2008 attacks in Mumbai (Bombay) has appealed against his death penalty in India's Supreme Court.

Mohammad Ajmal Amir Qasab filed his appeal through prison authorities, prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam told the BBC.

The attack claimed 165 lives. Nine other gunmen were also killed.

Qasab was found guilty of waging war against India, multiple murder and conspiracy. He was sentenced to death in May last year.

In February, the high court in Mumbai rejecting his appeal against the sentence. It is not clear when the Supreme Court would provide Qasab with legal aid and take up the appeal.

The lawyer who defended Qasab during his trial says he understands why his former client is appealing.

"The law gives rights to all to defend themselves. There's no delay. It's a judicial process," Abbas Kazmi told the BBC.

"Anyone would try to cling on to the slightest hope he has. That's what Qasab is doing."

The 60-hour siege which began on 26 November 2008 targeted luxury hotels, Mumbai's main railway station and a Jewish cultural centre.

Qasab and an accomplice carried out the assault on the station, killing 52 people.

The attacks soured ties between India and Pakistan, with India blaming Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for the attacks.

After initial denials, Pakistan acknowledged that the assault had been partially planned on its territory and that Qasab was a Pakistani citizen.

But despite charging seven people in connection with the attacks, the Pakistani authorities have yet to convict anyone.

Relations with India have been slowly improving and the two countries have resumed peace talks.


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Sunday, July 31, 2011

UK 'cannot free Pakistani detainee'

29 July 2011 Last updated at 16:52 GMT Yunus Rahmatullah Yunus Rahmatullah has been held for seven years without charge High Court judges have refused to free a man in Afghanistan after the charity Reprieve sought his release under one of England's most ancient laws.

Yunus Rahmatullah was seized by British soldiers in Iraq in 2004 as a suspected insurgent and then secretly taken by US forces to Bagram air base.

His lawyers wanted a writ of habeas corpus, forcing the government to ask Washington to release Mr Rahmatullah.

But the High Court ruled the UK had no control over the prisoner's fate.

Lord Justice Laws and Mr Justice Silber dismissed Reprieve's application and refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus, a right in English law which dates back to the Magna Carta.

Under habeas corpus, an accused person has to be either charged or released if they are detained for too long.

But Lord Justice Laws said Rahmatullah, who is from Pakistan, was "in the hands of the Americans" and British ministers were not in a position to "direct (his) delivery".

Admitted 'jihad'

Mr Rahmatullah's case emerged in 2009 after ministers admitted two detainees, formerly held by British forces in Iraq, had been transferred by the Americans to Afghanistan, a process dubbed extraordinary rendition.

The 28-year-old was seized by British forces in February 2004 during an operation against insurgents in Iraq.

The soldiers handed him over to their US counterparts under a Memorandum of Understanding covering how prisoners would be managed. Within weeks he was at Bagram and was held incommunicado until his family were permitted to speak to him on the telephone last year.

Mr Rahmatullah told US interrogators he was the victim of brainwashing and regretted ever joining the jihad in Iraq.

In June 2010, a detention review board accepted his pleas and authorised his release, saying he posed "no enduring security threat" - but he remains in detention.

Nathalie Lieven QC, for Mr Rahmatullah, told the High Court on Friday his client was being held in breach of international law and added: "It is UK forces which detained this man. It is the UK who have the power to get him back."

But James Eadie QC, for the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence, said Mr Rahmatullah was "in the power, custody and control of the US" and he said it was not right for a British court to "opine" on the legality of an American detention and any such action could affect Britain's relationship with the US.

Following the court's decision, Reprieve said it would appeal against the ruling.

Its legal director Cori Crider said: "The court clearly understood the importance of habeas corpus and was troubled that a cleared man could be held for over seven years, but found against Mr Rahmatullah because the UK continues to hide the ball about its role in his detention and transfer to a black hole, as well as its power to get him out now."


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End in sight for Cairn India deal

26 July 2011 Last updated at 21:30 GMT Douglas Fraser By Douglas Fraser BBC Scotland Business and Economy Editor Cairn employee The Indian government's condition would reduce profits from Cairn India An end is in sight in the long-running dispute over a major oil deal in which Cairn Energy has faced delay by the Indian government.

The Edinburgh-based oil explorer is taking the issue to shareholders of its Indian offshoot.

Cairn is expected to accept a sharp cut in the value of its oil fields in Rajasthan.

The company has been trying to sell a controlling stake in Cairn India for almost a year.

But the sale to metals company Vedanta has been stalled by the Indian government.

Last month, cabinet ministers in Delhi decided to change the terms under which Cairn Energy was encouraged to explore for oil in the Rajasthani desert.

Having found oil, that change is calculated by Cairn to reduce its value by ?176m ($289m)

Cairn India, the spin-off company which is now 52% owned by Cairn Energy in Scotland, has warned the Indian government that a lack of co-operation in developing the vast Mangala field in Rajasthan is harming the national interest, by forcing higher energy imports.

The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), majority owned by the Indian government, has been pushing to reduce its liability to pay all the royalties on oil production, as previously agreed.

The Indian government has ruled those royalties should now be deducted before calculating Cairn India's profits.

While the dispute has continued, the flow from Mangala has been limited to 125,000 barrels per day, when it could be increased to 240,000 barrels.

Cairn India is now to ballot shareholders.

And as Cairn Energy and Vedanta together control 80% of the company, approval of the changed terms is expected.

Rahul Dhir, chief executive of Cairn India, said: "The Rajasthan fields have significant growth potential and an increase in production from this world class asset will enhance the energy security of our nation.

"The optimal development of this resource will only be possible with the active support of our joint venture partner, ONGC and the Government of India".

The quarterly update on Cairn India reflects the Mangala oil field coming on stream, with revenue since the quarter to June 2010 up by 342% to ?506m ($830m), with profit after tax up 869% to ?384 ($610m).

Cairn India is also increasing its drilling activity in Sri Lankan waters.


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