KARACHI, April 18: A division bench of the Sindh High Court has remanded a suit between two groups of the Aligarh Muslim University Old Boys Association of Pakistan to the trial court for trial on merit.

The order to this effect was given by the SHC bench while granting the appeal of three life members of the association against the judgment of an SHC single bench in a suit filed for rendition of accounts and for declaring the association’s election, held on September 13, 1997, illegal and unlawful.

The division bench, comprising Justice Sabihuddin Ahmad and Justice S. Ali Aslam Jafri, set aside the judgment of Justice M. Shaiq Usmani, now retired, who had decided the suit in favour of the defendants.

Muhammad Yusuf Kureshy, the president of the Federation of Architects, Engineers and Town Planner of Pakistan, Shaikh Faiz Ahmed, a former director-general of the Capital Development Authority, and Jaseem Khan, a former inspector-general of the Sindh police, had also alleged that the defendants had been responsible for misappropriation of funds and accounts.

The suit has been filed against secretary of industries and mineral resources department, Sindh, registrar of the Joint Stock Companies, the president of the Aligarh Muslim University Old Boys Association of Pakistan, Zille Ahmed Nizami, and vice presidents Brig Sajjad Hussain (retd), Naunehal Zaidi, Qamarul Salaam and Zakir Ali Khan, treasurer Afzal Munif, joint secretaries Rafiuddin Burney, Abdul Wahab Khan and Dr Jawaid Aziz, and 12 members of the executive committee of the association.