Reaping a crop sown by someone else

Question

Question: If someone’s sown land is reaped without his permission, will there be sin in it? For he has bought more than 75 bighas (a local unit of land area) of land.

Answer

Whatever a person has sown in land he owns is the property of the sower. No one has the right to reap it without the owner’s permission; rather, doing so is usurpation (ghasb) and oppression (zulm). Nor is the import of the law that if someone has more than 75 bighas, his crop may be reaped.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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