Pilgrims fleeced, catering fraud other crimes at Sufi Shrine

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LAHORE - One way or the other, almost every visitor gets robbed at Data Darbar - the shrine of famous Sufi saint Hazrat Ali Bin Usman Al-Hajveri.

Tens of thousands of devotees from across the country visit the Lahore’s historic shrine daily. But they are virtually robbed by the food sellers, contractors, and mafias who in fact enjoy the administrative control of the shrine.

In addition to fleecers and fraudsters, the populous Data Darbar locality is among the worst crime-hit areas of the provincial metropolis.

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Devotees from across the country visiting the shrine take sigh of relief when they pay homage to their spiritual leader buried here. About 40,000 to 50,000 pilgrims daily visit the shrine of Hazrat Ali Hajveri widely known as Data Ganj Bakhsh, according to Data Darbar manager Mr Jahangir.

Due to poor administration of Auqaf department which is also custodian of the shrine, security, janitorial and administrative issues are not up to the mark.

When a devotee enters in the Darbar limits, he has to face swindlers, pickpockets and kidnappers roaming around the premises in guise of beggars, food sellers, addicts, and flower sellers.

Food (Lungar) sellers not only sell substandard food but also in lesser quantity than declared. A devotee, Muhammad Salman said, “I bought a Daigh of rice of 10 kg to distribute among the poor but when I checked, there was hardly 5 kg food in ‘Daigh’. The irony is that one cannot countercheck the weight at the Data Darbar.”

Another regular visitor told The Nation that some food sellers only receive money from the rich devotees to distribute food among the people but after distributing minor chunk of the food, they put the food again at their counter for sale.

Similarly, many devotees coming from far flung are deprived of their money through pickpocketing when they enter in the rushy area of the shrine.

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Another grave concern of Data Sahib devotees is overcharging by the contractors of Auqaf for shoes-keeping. The department has fixed Rs5 for each pair of shoes when a devotee goes inside the Darbar he has to put his shoes off and hand them over to the Darbar staff.

But in ‘normal’ practice, the contractor charges Rs100 to 150 per pair of shoes keeping in view the dressing and financial position of the devotee.

Jabbar Ahmad, a resident of Bahawalnagar, who was there with his family, complained to the Darbar manager that the shoes-keeping staff had charged Rs100 from his wife and also misbehaved with her