December 24, 2025
By Qambar Ali
ABBOTTABAD
There was a time when Abbottabad’s Christian cemetery sprawled across 12 kanals (65,000 square feet), spacious enough to honour even those generations yet unborn. But 200 years later, encroachment has rewritten its boundaries, and only five kanals (27,000 sq. ft.) now remain to remember its magnitude.
Today the cemetery sits enclosed by a few houses pressed against its right side, a wide lane spiralling upwards toward the town on its left. Alleys and passageways hem it in from the front and the back, all of them built on what was once sacred ground. The cemetery has become a ghost of itself, its shrunken borders telling a story of wilful injustice – of encroachment and slow suffocation.
The land was purchased on December 17, 1825, for 6,000 Indian rupees. Legend tells of the buyer, a Pakka Sahib afflicted with consumption, who had fallen under the spell of Abbottabad’s dense green forests and temperate air. For decades after Partition, district councils held the cemetery in trust, until a court decision finally returned it to the Christian community.
The first blows: Usurpation in the 1980s
The encroachment began in the late 1980s, when a real estate kingpin carved through the cemetery’s left side, its densest and oldest section, grinding everything to dust. He was building a housing society and needed a road.
At the time, Aslam Waqar Masih, a local government member, was incensed at this “development “. He rallied a crowd of Christians outside the cemetery gates, forcing the district administration to intervene before anger turned to violence. The lane sat unfinished for years while a jirgah, composed of members from both communities, weighed the dispute. The Christian community could feel the administration’s pressure, a quiet insistence on compromise. Reluctantly, they yielded and the lane ended up being paved.
“After we lost some part of the cemetery to the road, we had to construct a new boundary wall,” says Elder Nazir Masih. “Unfortunately, even that was not the end of it, and the encroachment had only just begun.” Elder Nazir Masih is the president of the cemetery committee and the brother of Aslam Waqar Masih.
Abbottabad has two other Christian cemeteries, the Gora Qabaristan and the Boer Cemetery, or Kakul Qabaristan, but these hold no more land for graves anymore.
“It has been five years since we dug up the last grave in Gora Qabaristan,” says Majid Bhatti, a member of the cemetery’s committee there. “After that, we tried twice more and found older burials. The only burial ground for us is the Christian cemetery, yet in a way, we do not even have that.”
Expanding encroachments, broken promises
After the first usurpation, community leaders made daily visits to the cemetery, dreading the worst in their hearts. A few years passed, and finally when the community was at ease, yet another housing society sprang up on the right side of the shrivelled cemetery. The residents demanded footbridges over the cemetery land connecting their houses to the main way. The community sat together, weighed the land grabbing in the past, but reluctantly allowed two footbridges for the houses in front of the new society.
The beneficiaries had agreed to allow passage to adjacent houses from their front and prevent any further encroachment.
But this promise was not kept. Instead the new residents of the adjacent houses began using the cemetery ground, for lack of another passage. In just a few months, without informing the Christian community, the narrow throughway in the middle of the cemetery was widened for vehicles to pass through, by levelling a dozen more graves. Now, plans to pave the trail are underway. The community fears this will be the last nail in the coffin.
While we are inspecting the tombstones, a 70-something man waves at us from a rooftop built on cemetery land. He has been watching me and Elder Nazir since some time. When we do not react, he comes down, inviting us to a cup of tea and biscuits. This is the same person who had vowed to give passage, but then erected a high wall, turning the front alley into a cul-de-sac. With a contrite smile, he gestures to the demolished walls and asks Nazir if he was behind the anti-encroachment drive. Elder Nazir replies that the action was long overdue and that much of the encroachment still remained.
Environmental violations and desecration
Next came the nullah, diverted from its original course to run through the Christian graveyard. Measuring 10 feet in width and six feet in depth, its original depression was filled with gravel, while a new channel was carved out through land held by the society’s new proprietors.
“During the Monsoon season, the sacred ground is flooded with water which carries plastic and waste material,” a visitor said. “A lot of times, we need to remove the waste and drain water. It sears the heart to see our parents’ graves subjected to such abominations.”
Legal roadblocks and administrative apathy
Community members have knocked on every door and have spared no effort to reverse the status quo. Pastor of the Presbyterian Church, Micheal Faiz, narrates their ordeal.
“The Peshawar High Court passed an order in 2013 ordering district administration to take back the encroached graveyard lands in the province,” he says. “A team of anti-corruption officials was tasked to take legal action against the Auqaf and Revenue officials, who were abetting the encroachers. But the land of our cemetery has not been retrieved in these 12 years, and the authorities have been passing the buck ever since.”
In 1977, the Public Property (Removal of Encroachment Act), was passed in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. The law has been amended since a few years, but the fines and imprisonment for encroachers remain in place. Because the Christian cemetery dates back to pre-partition days, the immemorial user principle applies to it, meaning that the cemetery is public property and the district administration must retrieve it.
In March 2025, the Christian community of Abbottabad protested in the city and marched towards its Press Club. But there was barely any media coverage and the administration turned a blind eye.
“Hundreds of our applications are pending in every department, and no action has ever been taken,” says Elder Nazir. “I have even gone to see the Governor and requested him to allot some land for a cemetery in Abbottabad. But there was no positive response and I had to come back empty handed. I represent my community and its members look up to me to bring forth a solution.’’
While Elder Nazir is speaking, a school boy trespasses through the cemetery towards his house. Nazir points to the ground where the boy’s shoes have just left a mark.
“My grandfather was buried there. I was seven years old at the time,” he says, sadly. “His grave has now been pressed to the ground thanks to the constant trampling by people.” The pain of just a small visit to this cemetery is evident from the faraway look in Nazir’s eyes.
In September 2025, the District Administration began an encroachment drive in Abbottabad. It also tore down some boundary walls of the houses which stood on the usurped cemetery land. However, this freed space was quickly reoccupied and the Christian cemetery committee was not given its due custody.
‘’Ironically, whenever we attempt to get our encroached graveyard land back, we are expected to give it to the Muslim society,” says Nazir. “Once a higher official took me in his official vehicle to visit the cemetery. I was happy, thinking the matter would finally find a resolution and our ancestors can lay in peace. The officer was polite all the way, raving about interfaith harmony. When we arrived and I told him the entire history of usurpations, he interrupted and said, ‘why don’t you just give the locals what they ask for.’ When I told him that the Christian community had already given up most of it, he took offense and left me there. I had to walk my way back to the city.”
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the Auqaf, Hajj, Religious and Minority Affairs Department is supposed to safeguard minority rights.
However, by banding minorities’ affairs with Auqaf and Hajj has only had adverse effects. One Christian pastor notes that the minority affairs department does not even have a single official from their community. There are also concerns about financial transparency.
“Most of the concerned ministry’s budget is being channelled into seminaries, and the Churches are left to fend for themselves,” he says. “There are training and skill-building activities for minorities, but these are only superficial acts.”
Silence from the neighbourhood
Most of the neighbourhood residents seem nonchalant. But there are some, like Ahmad, who have tried to reason with the encroachers. He has visited the houses to point out the injustice, but his concerns have been brushed off.
“If what happened to the Christian cemetery happened to the Muslim graveyard, all hell would have broken loose,” he says. “Christian colonies and churches would have been wiped out. We are all familiar with what has happened with the Christian community in Pakistan. They haven’t been spared any humiliation,” he doesn’t mince his words.
There are at least 6,500 Christians in Abbottabad, and only six churches.
The Presbyterian Church who owns the graveyard, is the largest among them. Its members are highly educated and participate in civic life as educators, doctors, businessmen, and government officers. The community celebrates religious occasions, managing the Christmas expenses through self-fundraising, since government support is scarce.
An unfinished struggle for sacred space
A strong sense of fait accompli hangs over the cemetery. Even if the houses built on the encroached land cannot be demolished and the drain be restored to its original course, the Christian community can still be allotted government land. At the very least, it should be given custody of land freed from the encroachment. Despite the violence and discrimination facing religious minorities in Pakistan, it was once unimaginable to grab the land of a sacred place and desecrate its sanctity, while the authorities looked the other way. Whether it can be restored remains to be seen, but for now, the gravestones keep vigil over shrinking ground, and the community waits, endlessly.