MEERUT: In the aftermath of the riots and loot that took place after the 1947 Partition, Saudagar Mal, a native of Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) in West Pakistan, and 13 other families sought sanctuary in a small locality of Meerut. Under the newly-formed Indian government's rehabilitation scheme, Mal, as head of the 13 families, was allotted 24,500 sq m of land which was parcelled among the families. The new abode came to be known as Punjabi Pura in Brahmpuri area of the city. Twenty nine years later, during the 1976 Emergency, 3,920 sq m of this plot was "forcibly occupied" by district authorities and in 1986, the telecom department built a massive telephone exchange here. Over 40 years later, the Allahabad high court, on Monday, sought an answer from the district administration about the property's rightful owner within three weeks. The HC was acting on a petition filed by Mal's grandson, Rohit Malik , last week.Malik came in contact with Meerut-based RTI activist Lokesh Khurana early this year and filed a series of applications to the telecom department, district magistrate and the Meerut Development Authority (MDA) demanding relevant property papers that "substantiated the government's ownership over the land" but none of the authorities were able to provide any documents. The district revenue records, copies of which are with TOI, show "Saudagar Mal & others" as legal owners of the property."After collecting all the details, I filed a PIL with the HC petitioning the court to give directions to respondents to vacate the telephone exchange office and hand over the land to its rightful owner," said 40-year-old Malik.In reply to Malik's RTI query, Neeraj Kumar, information officer of BSNL, civil zone, had written, "The civil zone office of BSNL does not have any land ownership documents of the Brahmpuri telephone exchange."MDA, on the other hand, denied having any official records of the building."Somewhere along the years following Partition, our families came to believe that both the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi were responsible for the division and its ensuing violence. So, many of us became supporters of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh. Perhaps, this was why we were targeted during the Emergency," said Mangal Vinayak, 55, a resident of Punjabi Pura locality.Rajesh Mishra, counselor for Malik said, "A two-judge bench of justices Dilip Gupta and Jayant Banerjee directed all five respondents in the case, including principal secretary of the telecommunications department in New Delhi, managing director of BSNL, general manager of BSNL, Meerut district magistrate and special land acquisition officer of Meerut to file a counter affidavit in the case for the next hearing on December 5."

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