KARACHI, Jan 3: The Karachi Building Control Authority on Thursday demolished 28 illegally constructed shops in an old building that is protected under the Sindh Cultural Heritage Protection Act.

KBCA building controller Manzoor Qadir, after the demolition of the shops, sealed the protected building and said that other action like registering of an FIR would also be taken against the builders involved in the illegal activity.

The demolition action was started late on Wednesday night and continued on Thursday morning as the area, one of the main business centres, remains very congested during the day.

Sources told Dawn that the shutters of some shops in the protected building — Azeemuddin Mansion, situated opposite the Memon Masjid next to the Khori Garden — had always remained closed while the builder had demolished the inner structures and carried out the new constructions inside.

Nobody — not even the owner — could demolish or start any new construction in a structure protected under the act without getting a written permission from the advisory committee on cultural heritage affairs that is headed by the Sindh chief secretary. The violators could be sentenced to long prison terms and heavy fines could also be imposed on them.

When this reporter visited the site (Plot No MR 63/7, Market Quarters), the old building, constructed in the early part of the last century, early on Thursday the demolition was being carried out. A vendor selling biryani outside the building said that the construction work had been going on for the past many months.

This is probably the first time that due to the KBCA’s timely action a heritage protected building has been saved. Earlier, two heritage structures on Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan Road in Saddar vanished while the relevant government agencies looked the other way.

The sources said that the owners on paper might be different people, but the real owners of both the buildings — the one in Saddar and the one in Khori Garden area — are the same people.

They said that the work in the Azeemuddin Mansion had usually started in the afternoon and continued till late in the night. The construction material had been brought to the building and the debris had been removed late in the night to avoid suspicion of the neighbours, the KBCA and the Sindh culture department.

Answering Dawn queries, a Sindh culture department official, Badar Qureshi, who issues the permission after it is granted by the advisory committee, said that the Azeemuddin Mansion was a protected building, and the committee had not issued any permission for any construction in that structure.

KBCA building controller Manzoor Ahmad said that first a notice had been served on the builder, directing him to stop the illegal work in 24 hours as he had been carrying out the construction not only without the permission from the advisory committee but he also had not even had a KBCA approved building plan. He said then on Thursday morning the demolition had been carried out.