A recent order of the Supreme Court sparked concern and a recurring discussion on discrimination and the de facto exclusion of women from inheritance rights. The order held that the petitioners were not entitled to claim their mother’s inheritance after her death, if she had not claimed it during her lifetime.

This order is not only discriminatory but also seemingly devoid of the aid understanding of the structural, socio-economic, cultural and legal impediments that deter women from claiming and fully realising their inheritance rights.

In spite of the constitutional guarantees and statutory safeguards afforded to Pakistani women that specifically protect their right to own, hold and dispose of property, their access to and rights over their inherited property are only secondary, in nature and customarily, held and exercised through a male family member.

The Apex Court’s decision came at a time when there was an unprecedented increase in reported cases of gender-based violence and public debate over national femicide and the failure of the state to protect women assumed centre stage.

One such case that surfaced online was a video of two brothers brutally thrashing their sister with a hammer and a helmet for demanding her rightful share of their ancestral property. Undoubtedly, gender-based violence is directly linked to women’s property rights. If fully realised, these rights will facilitate women in having bargaining power at home which will significantly reduce their overall dependency on their male family members.

Pakistani women usually acquire land through inheritance. However, legal ownership, or inheritance mutation per se, does not automatically infer economic benefits upon them – nor does it help establish or maintain their financial security. Lest they are allowed to independently control, manage, benefit from and make decisions in relation to their owned property.

In order to claim possession and control over their inheritance, an application for partition and possession of their share needs to be filed; and if successful, another suit for execution of the decision will need to be filed to get possession. This creates an additional barrier in women’s access to secure land rights and is also a violation of S. 135-A of the Punjab Land Revenue Act, 1967. This act requires the Revenue Officer to partition jointly-owned property immediately after the transfer of legal ownership, upon the death of the owner – with the aim of giving women possession and control of their owned land.

One such case that surfaced online was a video of two brothers brutally thrashing their sister with a hammer and a helmet for demanding her rightful share of their ancestral property.

However, if the decision is appealed, the already lengthy process, if it goes up to the Board of Revenue could easily take up to a decade. At times, during the process of transferring legal title, women are either fraudulently excluded from the list of heirs or through an ‘oral’ gift made previously by the deceased in favour of his son which is not in the knowledge of his daughter. This, however, can only be made possible with the collusion and corruption of the patwari and other revenue officials.

In order to challenge the inheritance mutation, a civil suit can be filed on the grounds of fraud and misrepresentation whereas the Assistant Commissioner retains the authority to hear applications for the correction of the entry of legal heirs.

Fortunately, the digitisation of land records by the Punjab Land Records Authority established in 2017 – and the recent introduction of rigorous verification methods that require the biometric verification of all legal heirs – have managed to reduce the stronghold of the patwari system and have been reasonably successful in making land records easily accessible and secure from tampering. However, the deep-rooted and pervasive problem of corruption still persists.

The ‘patwari system’ is an extremely skewed, gendered system, made to serve the interests of wealthy landlords. No effective recourse exists to hold these officials accountable for their malfeasance.

Historically, these officials have nearly always gone scot-free and are rarely, if at all, penalised for wrongdoings. Whereas women deprived of their land rights bear the brunt and cost of protracted litigation with no guarantee of a favourable outcome. The inconsistency and loopholes in the existing legal system help the officials escape accountability.

There are two parallel statutory systems of transferring the legal title of property. The often-abused one is the ‘oral’ transfer of property that vests excessive powers in the patwari to execute the entire process. From acquiring signatures and thumb impressions of the parties to recording witness statements of the designated numberdar and pattidar and the transferring party.

While both systems are abused to illegally deprive women of their property rights with the collusion of the revenue officials, attributing wrongdoing to them is easier when transactions are registered through the Land Registration Authority.

Specific offenses should be inserted in the law to empower the courts and the Land Registering Authority to impose criminal penalties on those responsible and the existing legal framework should also be revised to provide a single and consistent system of executing land transactions as opposed to two parallel systems.

The writer is a barrister   Twitter: @JAKalyar