A Record Does Not Prove Ownership: The Lahore High Court's Hiba Ruling and the Limits of Blockchain in Land Records

In the courtroom that day, the centre of attention was a piece of paper, not a witness. In a case before Justice Anwaar Hussain of the Lahore High Court's Rawalpindi Bench, two sides of a family faced off over inherited property. One side produced a mutation—an entry in the revenue department's register changing the name on the record. Many people believe that once a name appears in the register, ownership is established. What the court said directly challenges that belief: a mutation merely records a claim; by itself it does not prove ownership. Paper only records what someone asserted—not whether the event actually happened. That gap is the heart of the matter. And it is precisely this gap that blockchain-based land-record systems promise to fill.

The trust in records and the trap of oral gifts

A mutation is an entry in the revenue department asserting that a plot's ownership has changed. Across Pakistan and much of South Asia, this register—the khata, the parcha, the land record—is the main paper of ownership in daily life. People buy and sell land, mortgage it, divide it among heirs, all on the strength of this register. In villages, it is this register that secures credit, settles marriages, and holds the account of generations. Over years of reading through land disputes in this region, I keep meeting the same pattern—a family breaks, and at its centre lies a disputed entry. Yet in a judicial setting the question is far subtler: is this entry proof of ownership, or merely a record of a claim? The Lahore ruling leans toward the second—a mutation does not by itself establish ownership; it only shows that someone reported a transaction to the register.

The matter grows more complicated with hiba, or oral gift. Under Islamic and Pakistani law, a hiba has three essential elements—declaration by the donor, acceptance by the donee, and delivery of possession. If any one is missing, the gift is incomplete. Because it is oral, the role of paper here is limited; witnesses, the parties' conduct, and actual possession become the core evidence. Suppose a father verbally gifts land to his younger son but no deed is made. Year after year the son enjoys the land, pays the revenue, takes the harvest. In the eyes of the law, that possession may itself be evidence of the gift. Yet the register may still show the father's name. This is where one sees that the true basis of ownership lies not in paper but in events.

The court also drew a clear line on the burden of proof. The one alleging fraud must prove the specific particulars of fraud; the one claiming to have received a gift must prove the existence of the gift. The burden is thus divided between the parties, and neither can win on mere suspicion. The ruling also reminds us that a gift made by excluding legal heirs requires extra caution—because inheritance rights cannot easily be curtailed. And what counts as 'sufficient particulars' cannot be fixed by a rigid test; every case has its own context, and so its own assessment.

Digitising is not the same as putting records on a blockchain

Over the past two decades, many South Asian countries have tried to bring land records onto computers—scanning paper registers into digital databases. But digitising is not the same as putting records on a blockchain. In a digital database, an administrator can change an entry if they wish, and no permanent trace of that change remains. A blockchain is the opposite—every change is logged, and no one can silently erase anything. It is this difference that makes blockchain attractive in the context of land corruption.

What blockchain solves, and what it does not

A blockchain is essentially a distributed ledger—the same information stored on countless computers, and to alter any entry one must break the cryptographic links to every prior entry. Each new entry is mathematically chained to the last, so changing one number in the middle collapses the whole chain. Quietly forging a record becomes nearly impossible. In land records, the appeal is obvious: where today register tampering, forged deeds, and collusive fake mutations with revenue officials are common, an immutable ledger could cut a large share of the corruption.

Several countries and regions have run pilot projects exploring this possibility—placing land-record entries on a blockchain to increase transparency. The idea is simple: every transfer of ownership becomes a transaction, permanently recorded in chronological order. No one can go back and delete an old entry, and anyone can verify who owned what at any given time. To this has been added the idea of smart contracts—transfers could be logged automatically once conditions are met. For preserving the integrity of records, this is genuinely a powerful tool.

But here the Lahore ruling stands as an uncomfortable mirror. What a blockchain proves is what is written in the ledger—not why it was written, or whether the writing is legally valid. Just as a mutation records a claim, a blockchain entry records a transaction. In the case of an oral gift, the real question is not at the level of paper—was there a declaration, an acceptance, a delivery of possession. These three events happen outside paper, in the soil, among people. There the blockchain is merely a spectator, not a judge.

The promise of technology and the limits of reality

Here lies the biggest misconception among blockchain enthusiasts. The technology protects the integrity of information, but it does not guarantee the veracity of that information. If someone enters false information into the ledger, the blockchain will make it immortal—forever. This is the so-called garbage in, garbage out problem. Real land does not live on a blockchain; only a representation of it does. Actual possession, boundaries, the act of transfer—these require a reliable source of information to be entered into the ledger. If a survey officer takes a bribe and records a wrong boundary, the blockchain will make that error permanent. Where the entry point itself is weak, an immutable vault does not protect very much.

The second problem is legal recognition. In many countries the legal status of blockchain records remains unclear. If a court will not treat a mutation as conclusive proof, it is unreasonable to expect it to treat a blockchain entry as automatic proof. Rather, the question will arise whether the legal act behind that entry is valid. Law first, technology second—that is the order the court has reminded us of. Technology is not a substitute for law, only a tool.

Third, a blockchain can only successfully record future transactions. The millions of papers, registers, and disputed claims accumulated in the past—bringing these on-chain also brings old disputes along. The land in court today does not cease to be disputed because it is placed on a blockchain; rather, the dispute is deposited on a new, immutable layer. When disputed information becomes immutable, the problem does not shrink—it grows. So which information goes on-chain, and who verifies its truth, are two questions that need answers first.

Not a conclusion, but a question

The Lahore ruling is ultimately not about technology but about truth. A register, a seal, an entry—these can never replace the event. Blockchain can reduce land corruption if the question is who is claiming what. But when the question is what actually happened, the answer must be sought in witnesses, possession, and human conduct—exactly where the court has told us to look. In the future that is coming, technology and law must walk together; neither is a substitute for the other. So the question still hangs in the air—will we learn to treat the record as truth, or to record the truth?