Mr Khero, 84,977.59 acres. That is the figure NAB Sukkur investigators say they have found tangled up in irregular records across five districts of Sindh. This land belongs, on paper, to the Irrigation Department you head as secretary, but its ownership apparently needed “urgent directives” before revenue authorities could even agree on who it truly belongs to.
Read that number again. This is not a clerical slip one patwari can fix in an afternoon. It is land spread across more than 500 dehs: 38,854.72 acres in Dadu, 22,958.64 in Sujawal, 12,519.78 in Jamshoro, 6,620.63 in Shaheed Benazirabad, and 4,023.82 in Tando Mohammad Khan. Nearly 85,000 acres, and NAB had to formally order the correction of records and the transfer of that land back into your own department’s name. If the department cannot account for land of that scale sitting under its own charge, what exactly has it been accounting for?
This is not the first time your name has appeared in a NAB file this year. Investigators had already sought your service record going back to your years as executive engineer, along with documentation on the installation and financing of gates 44 to 59 at Sukkur Barrage, and your dealings with at least one contractor. That inquiry came and went with little public explanation. Now NAB Sukkur has opened two separate, extensive investigations at once into corruption, embezzlement of government funds, misuse of authority, and assets beyond known income, naming you and “other senior officials and influential individuals.” That last phrase deserves its own question: who are these influential individuals, and why does a scandal over land records of this size require a euphemism instead of a list of names?
A process is supposed to filter complaints like these before they become full investigations. The Sindh government itself notified a committee in December 2024, headed by the chairman of the anti-corruption establishment, meant to screen NAB complaints against civil servants first. Did that screening happen here, or did two investigations simply proceed around it? The public deserves to know which safeguard, if any, was applied before your name and your department’s land holdings became the subject of a NAB file.
I want to be fair about what is proven and what is alleged. NAB has opened investigations, not secured convictions. You have not been found guilty of anything in a court of law, and due process should run its course without a mob’s verdict standing in for a judge’s. But due process is not the same as silence, and silence is what the public has received. No statement from your office explaining how 85,000 acres ended up in disputed records. No accounting of how long the department knew, if it knew at all. No word on who the “influential individuals” named alongside you actually are.
Sindh’s irrigation system carries water to farmers who have no NAB office to write to and no lawyer on retainer. When land meant for canals, drains, and public infrastructure disappears into unclear ownership for years at a stretch, their water, their crops, and their province absorb the cost, whether or not anyone is ever convicted of anything. That is true regardless of how this investigation ends.
So the questions are simple, Mr Khero. How did land across five districts end up in records so irregular that it needed NAB intervention rather than a routine departmental audit? Who has been using or occupying that land while its ownership sat unresolved? And why should the people of Sindh wait for a courtroom verdict before they get an honest answer to a bureaucratic question: whose name was actually on that land, and how long has your department known?
Until there is a public accounting- not a NAB notice, not a leaked document, but a statement from you- this will read like every other file that disappears into Sukkur’s investigation queue. Prove that this one is different.
