A court in Nawabshah has sentenced four people to a year in jail and fined them Rs10,000 each for cutting trees along the Indus river.

The crime took place in December 2021, when over 100 trees were destroyed along the river in the Qazi Ahmed area of Nawabshah district of Sindh.

“All the four suspects were hired by the timber mafia,” a spokesperson of NGO, Indus Development Organization, told Aaj News, adding that cutting trees may lead to continuous floods and a dry season.

“When there are trees, the soil has strong water-retention capacity, and it prevents the danger of floods in heavy rainfall during the rainy season. However, there is nothing to check the heavy flow of water in the absence of trees, which leads to floods,” he said.

He said that they had lodged a complaint against the culprits involved, who were later arrested after Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto took notice of the crime.

The spokesperson said, however, that the men arrested were not the actual culprits as they were given a contract to cut the trees.

The crime was not the first of its kind but “this time the Sindh government took action and brought the suspects to justice,” he said.

A case was registered against the suspects in December last year and in July 2022, the court sentenced all the four accused.