Rajanpur sits between the Suleiman foothills and the Indus katcha. The town was founded around 1770 by Makhdoom Sheikh Rajan Shah. The district was cut from Dera Ghazi Khan on 1 July 1982. Jampur is now listed as its own district on newer Punjab maps.
Rajanpur tehsil — 853,192 people, literacy 41.38 percent (women 33.4). Rojhan — 474,077 people, literacy 20.98 percent (women about 13 percent). Saraiki on the canal squares. Balochi large in Rojhan. Mazari, Gorchani, Dreshak country.
Katcha means the riverine belt: shifting banks, cane, tracks that vanish in a flood. For decades armed gangs used that ground — kidnapping for ransom, robbery, a tax on the farmer. This page will not describe hideouts or routes. It records that 2025–26 operations in the Rajanpur and Rahim Yar Khan katcha produced official counts of more than five hundred surrenders, about 340 on this side, plus destroyed bunkers. The government called the belt cleared in February 2026. Residents will test that sentence after the next flood. An atlas that hides the daku is lying. An atlas that turns him into folklore is also lying.
Rojhan’s 21 percent literacy is one of the worst tehsil rows in Punjab. The same katcha floods villages. The long road toward Kashmore has needed escorts. Dreshak, Mazari and Gorchani houses still organise the vote — Hafeez-ur-Rehman Dreshak is on recent National Assembly notices.
Census 2023. Operation figures from Punjab government statements of 2025–26.