There is a man in Lahore today who pours tea for strangers. His hands, which once signed documents covering the most prized real estate on the Mall Road of Murree — land granted by the British Crown in the 1880s for faithful military service now grip a kettle at a roadside stall. His name is Yazdiyar Kaikobad. He was once a Member of the National Assembly. He was once called the Lord of Murree.
He once donated land from his own inheritance to create a public park so that the citizens of a city he loved could breathe freely. He is Parsi, Zoroastrian, a keeper of the sacred fire. And the darkness came for him anyway, wearing a beard, carrying prayer beads, speaking the language of the devout.
This is not one man's tragedy alone. It is Pakistan's tragedy rendered in miniature, with all the familiar characters in their familiar roles: the powerful and greedy consuming the gentle and trusting, while the state looks away, and ordinary people watching their leaders daily quietly absorb the lesson that this is simply how the world works.
To understand what was stolen, one must first understand what was given. The Kaikobad family served the British military as logistics suppliers along the Rawalpindi-to-Srinagar route through treacherous mountain passes. Their reward was land on the Ridge, stretching from the Holy Trinity Church along the Mall to the General Post Office.
On it they built a hotel and residences constructed to Murree's own bylaws, structures of permanence and civic dignity. And then, in an act almost unimaginable among Pakistan's propertied class, they donated a portion of their most valuable land as a public park. Yazdiyar Kaikobad Park. Ask honestly: how many of Pakistan's elites have ever surrendered a single square foot of prime real estate for the public good? This family gave an entire park and asked nothing in return.
Yazdiyar Kaikobad carried that inheritance into the National Assembly, a living fulfilment of what Muhammad Ali Jinnah promised on August 11, 1947: “You are free to go to your temples, your mosques, or any other place of worship. You may belong to any religion, caste, or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State.” Jinnah's own beloved wife, Ruttie Petit, was born Parsi. This community was never peripheral to Pakistan's founding. It was woven into it.
But Pakistan taught its people a different lesson, and it taught it from the top. Murree is known globally not only for its hills but for its role in producing leaders connected to one of Pakistan's most catastrophic acts of economic self-harm: the LNG scandal that cost the nation an estimated 50 billion dollars in losses, seeded a gas circular debt now exceeding 12 billion dollars, and gave birth to the petroleum levy that falls hardest on the poorest.
The Parsis gave without taking. They served without stealing. They loved this nation, while others looted it in the name of Religion
When citizens watch their leaders negotiate ruinous deals and walk free, received with honour, their names on institutions, a lesson is absorbed at the cellular level. The lesson is not complex. It is this: the rules do not apply to those bold enough to ignore them. Greed is a strategy. Piety is a costume. Look around for a target. The target they found was Yazdiyar Kaikobad.
The method was patient and professional. A syndicate of property dealers, outwardly devout, publicly respectable, befriended him over time. By calculated design, they engineered his addiction to narcotics. With his judgment eroded, they drew him to the gambling table, a game constructed so he could not win. Debt followed debt. Property followed property.
The hotel went. The residents went. The ancestral land went piece by piece into the hands of men who thanked Almighty Allah five times daily for their good fortune. The man who had legislated in Pakistan's Parliament, who belonged to a community that gave the nation Justice Dorab Patel, perhaps the most morally fearless jurist in Pakistan's history, and the great columnist Ardeshir Cowasjee, was reduced to a waiter in a tea stall. That sentence should be impossible to read without something breaking inside you.
How can I ever forget the most brutal comment—from a former Tahsil Nazim whose own 12-story building was declared illegal by the Supreme Court and the mastermind of Murree, a concrete jungle? He told me, coldly: "We cleared Murree of infidels by gambling and narcotics tricks. Parsis preach fire, so fire rained on Murree. By design, we made that KAFIR a beggar." And all the while, his fingers rolled the Tasbih. How tragically they twist Islam into a stain on Pakistan, using faith for greed, yet never tasting its true spirit.
The Quran, in Surah Al-Baqarah, is unambiguous: “There is no compulsion in religion.” The men who destroyed Yazdiyar Kaikobad knew this verse by heart. They recited it in their prayers. Then they boasted of cleansing a mountain of a kafir. That is not religion. It is its desecration, and the Almighty Allah, before Whom they bow, heard the boast as clearly as He heard the prayer.
Pakistan's Parsi community numbers fewer than 1,200 souls. They have never raised an army, never demanded a province, never asked for anything except the right to light their fires in peace and serve the nation that sheltered them. They have repaid that shelter a thousandfold in law, in journalism, in medicine, in civic generosity. They are a dying community. And Pakistan is letting them be extinguished not by open persecution but by the casual, comfortable indifference of a state too distracted by its own crises to protect the most harmless among its citizens.
To the United Nations — to the Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief: here is a case requiring no complex investigation. A member of a minority community was systematically targeted, addicted, and dispossessed through a conspiracy motivated explicitly by his religious identity. The perpetrator boasted of it by name. This is a human rights violation with witnesses, evidence, and a confession. Please take formal note.
To former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who knows Yazdiyar Kaikobad personally: this is the rare moment when political power and moral clarity align. Return this man's property not as charity, but as justice, as the fulfilment of Jinnah's promise. History will record it. If divine accountability means anything, Almighty Allah will give you full marks.
And now, I plead to Field Marshal Asim Munir—the only man in power who is a practising Muslim. Sir, you alone can deliver justice in a single minute, exactly as the teachings of Islam command. Please, give us justice before this rot destroys us all.
Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, shared deep personal and social ties with the Parsi community. He married Rattanbai "Ruttie" Petit, the daughter of his close friend Sir Dinshaw Petit. He stood shoulder to shoulder with leaders like K.A. Marker and countless other Parsis who served Pakistan with more honesty and loyalty than any of us dare to claim today. Can any Pakistani—any single one—raise a hand and swear we have been more loyal to this land than the Parsis of Pakistan?
We cannot. Because the truth burns brighter than their sacred fire: The Parsis gave without taking. They served without stealing. They loved this nation, while others looted it in the name of Religion.
And now, I beg you—Field Marshal, Asim Munir. You are not just a general. You are a practising Muslim. And in the teachings of Islam, justice is not a suggestion—it is a commandment. Give this man justice. Give these people justice. In one minute. As Islam demands. Before the fire stops burning. Before the darkness wins. History does not forgive silence in the face of injustice. It only records it and assigns its proper name.