Anti-Corruption Bureau alleges 2.9 kanals of State and Kahcharai land encroached, plinth area and height raised without mandatory clearances, and construction inside the river's prohibited fringe.

Aalimi Nation · Srinagar

The Jammu and Kashmir Anti-Corruption Bureau has registered an FIR against several serving and former officials and two private beneficiaries over the alleged illegal construction of a multi-storey building in the flood basin of the River Jhelum at Rajbagh, Srinagar.

The case, FIR No. 10/2026, was registered at Police Station ACB Srinagar following a joint surprise check and subsequent verification, a bureau spokesperson said on Wednesday. The building has been identified in reporting as "Trends", located opposite Hatrick restaurant in Rajbagh.

According to the ACB, the verification found alleged irregularities in the grant and later modification of building permissions, including a substantial increase in plinth area and height without mandatory no-objection certificates from the departments concerned. It also alleges encroachment of approximately 2.9 kanals of State and Kahcharai land, construction over drainage infrastructure, and construction inside the prohibited river-fringe area of the Jhelum.

The FIR names the then Senior Town Planner of the Srinagar Development Authority, Muneer Ahmad Khan; the then Joint Commissioner (Planning) of the Srinagar Municipal Corporation, R. K. Tutoo; the then In-charge Assistant Town Planner, SMC, Ulfat Jan; other officials of the departments concerned; and beneficiaries Gulzar Ahmad Sheikh and Parveena Akhter. The allegations include abuse of official position, criminal conspiracy and facilitation of unauthorised construction.

A permission history stretching two decades

According to the verification report, the SMC issued building permissions numbered 1052 on 18 January 2006 and 724 on 20 September 2006 in favour of Sheikh and Akhter. Those permissions were withdrawn later that year through SMC Order No. 891 of 2006, dated 4 November 2006, on the ground that the land had been notified for acquisition for a public park.

The withdrawal order was quashed by the Jammu and Kashmir High Court on 11 September 2013, and the permissions were restored in 2015.

In 2017, the building plan was revised. The plinth area rose from roughly 8,100 square feet to 10,260 square feet, and the permissible height from 50 feet to 70 feet. The ACB's verification treats this revision as being in violation of the Srinagar Master Plan 2000–2021 and the building bylaws.

The report also states that the Irrigation and Flood Control Department cancelled all earlier NOCs after the floods of 2014, and that no fresh NOC was issued for the survey numbers in question. A conditional clearance issued in 2005 had already recorded that the land lay close to the Jhelum in a flood-prone area.

The bureau further alleges that a permanent retaining wall and concrete structures were raised on land adjoining the river, that part of the basement was built on encroached land, that construction took place over sewerage lines near a City Drainage Department dewatering station, and that the structure falls within the 100-metre prohibited zone from the Jhelum.

Investigation is continuing.

An FIR is a first record of allegation and not a finding of guilt. None of those named has been convicted, and the allegations are yet to be tested in court. Aalimi Nation has sought comment from the officials and beneficiaries named, and from the Srinagar Development Authority and the Srinagar Municipal Corporation, and will carry their responses in full when received.

A Building Does Not Rise in a Night

An FIR over one structure in Rajbagh is welcome. It does not answer the question every resident of this city is already asking.

The FIR registered this week over a multi-storey building in Rajbagh is welcome. It is also, on its own, insufficient — and every resident of this city already knows why.

A structure of this size, in one of Srinagar's most visible neighbourhoods, on the bank of a river whose flood basin is mapped, notified and legally protected, does not appear overnight. It is raised over months. It requires excavation, material deliveries, labour, scaffolding, cranes. It is visible from the road, from neighbouring houses, and from the offices of the very departments whose job it is to notice.

So the question the Anti-Corruption Bureau must answer is not only who signed the permissions. It is who watched the walls go up and said nothing.

The chronology now in the public domain is instructive precisely because it is so long. Permissions in 2006, withdrawn the same year. A High Court order in 2013. Restoration in 2015. A revision in 2017 that reportedly added more than two thousand square feet of plinth and twenty feet of height. Flood control clearances cancelled after the catastrophe of 2014 and, per the verification, never renewed for this land. At every one of those junctures there was a file, an officer, a signature, and an opportunity to stop. The file moved forward regardless.

This is the pattern that ought to concern us more than any single building. In April, the ACB chargesheeted five SMC officials and a beneficiary over a four-storey commercial complex at Kursoo Rajbagh raised, it alleged, under the cover of permission for a residential house. In May, eleven were chargesheeted over structures at Jawahar Nagar, Gonikhan, Hari Singh High Street and Wazir Bagh. This week, ten more, including seven SMC officers. In July, residents of Srinagar were publicly petitioning the Lieutenant Governor and the Chief Minister for a high-level probe into commercial construction across the city. This is not a series of isolated lapses. It is a system operating exactly as its incentives dictate.

And the location matters more than the paperwork. In September 2014, this city drowned. Rajbagh was among the worst-hit neighbourhoods, submerged for days. Afterwards, the High Court directed the removal of encroachments along the Jhelum, and the flood control department served notices on Rajbagh and Jawahar Nagar residents with a three-day deadline. The deadline passed. Officials cited law-and-order concerns. The structures stayed.

Every square foot built inside a flood basin is capacity taken away from a river that will, sooner or later, need it back. The floodplain is not an aesthetic preference or a planning technicality. It is the space the water occupies when it rises, and if that space is filled with concrete, the water goes into homes instead. The people who pay for this are not the beneficiaries of any permission. They are the families two streets away with no political protection and no basement to lose.

Three things must follow, and the public is entitled to insist on all three.

First, the investigation must go past the names already listed. Three officers and two private individuals cannot account for twenty years of files. If more officials, in more departments, across more administrations, are found to have signed, deferred or looked away, they must be named too — whatever their present rank or retirement status.

Second, if the construction is established as unlawful, the remedy must be physical rather than clerical. Sealing the structure, demolishing the unauthorised portion and restoring the encroached State land is what the law provides for. Compounding fees and regularisation orders would only confirm the calculation that produces these buildings in the first place: that it is cheaper to build now and settle later.

Third, the departments must publish. Building permissions, revisions and NOCs for the flood-fringe zone should sit on a public register, searchable by survey number. Sunlight is a cheaper enforcement mechanism than any anti-corruption bureau, and it works before the concrete is poured rather than a decade afterwards.

Those named this week are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and this magazine extends it to them fully. The case will be decided by a court, not by public anger.

But the larger judgement does not require a verdict. Whatever the court finds about these individuals, the fact remains that a large building rose inside a protected flood zone in the middle of Srinagar while every institution charged with preventing it was fully staffed and funded.

State land is held in trust for the public. The Jhelum's banks belong to the river. If the law means anything in this city, it must mean the same thing for a building in Rajbagh as it does for a shopfront in a village — and it must be seen to mean it.