Seizure by the Custodian entails ownership

Question

Question: My father’s property passed to the Custodian of Evacuee Property. The Custodian made me the tenant of part of it, and my brother-in-law (my sister’s husband) the tenant of another part. There is one house in which my brother-in-law lives upstairs, and downstairs is my shop. Through my efforts I got the house with the shop bought by my brother-in-law, and he promised me: “I will not make you vacate the shop (the lower part).” But now his intentions have changed, and he has filed a case against me.

Answer

When the state seizes something by force and compulsion, this seizure (istila’) entails ownership. Under this rule, the houses over which the state took possession as owner at the time of ’47 became the property of the state. Then these houses were auctioned, and whoever bought them became the owner. The plots that your brother-in-law bought became his property.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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