KARACHI, May 7: Justice Rahmat Hussain Jafferi of the Sindh High Court has asked a woman and her husband to pay her brother Rs5 million as damages for his defamation. The case arose from a family dispute over property left behind by Syed Manzoor Hussain, who died in March 1974. He had two sons, Syed Khalid Manzoor (the plaintiff) and Syed Shahid Manzoor, and six daughters, Parveen Munawar (the defendant), Khurshid Munawar, Yasmin Munawar, Nasreen Munawar, Rehana Manzoor and Rizwana Qamar.
Movable and immovable property of ‘enormous value’, including agricultural land, was to be distributed among them and the widow, Qamar Jehan Begum, according to the Muslim law of inheritance. Parveen was married to Syed Minhajuddin, a nephew of the late Manzoor Hussain, and co-defendant in the case. The couple was settled in London but visited Pakistan occasionally. All the legal heirs executed a general power of attorney a week after Syed Manzoor’s death in favour of Khalid Manzoor, a UBL officer, to enable him to sell the joint immovable property and distribute the proceeds among them in accordance with their respective shares.
Parveen, however, revoked her power of attorney in October 1974 and she and Khushid Munawar instituted a suit for the administration of the estate in a Lahore civil court in 1975. Khalid and six other heirs, including Ms Qamar Jehan, were cited as defendants. The administration suit culminated in the appointment of Syed Salahuddin, plaintiff Khurshid’s husband, as the sole arbitrator in March 1980. He gave his award promptly and it was made a rule of the court the same year. Under the award and the consent decree, any dispute arising among the parties was to be settled by arbitration. According to the defamation suit moved by Khalid Manzoor through Advocate Syed Sami Ahmed, Parveen and husband Minhajuddin lodged a false and malicious complaint at the Saddar police station in Multan, under Sections 420,406,468,471, 120-B and 109 of the penal code against him and other heirs others in respect of the ancestral property despite a compromise.
The case was registered in 1985 but no action was taken till 1988 when Minhaj obtained a warrant for Khalid’ arrest from a Multan magisterial court and visited the bank’s head office on Chundrigar Road, Karachi, along with a Multan police officer to execute it.
Khalid was arrested in his apartment from a Stadium Road building and locked up at the New Town police station, where he remained confined for three days. Khalid obtained bail first from a Karachi sessions court and then from the trial court in Multan. The court acquitted him in 1991 holding that there was no possibility of conviction for lack of evidence and the complainants’ lack of inetrest.
Meanwhile, the defendants gave the widest possible publicity to the registration of the case, his arrest and trial and addressed letters to UBL high-ups to compel him to distribute property on their terms and Khalid moved a defamation suit in the Sindh High Court in 1989. As the suit came up for final adjudication last week, Advocate Sami Ahmed submitted that the plaintiff had been defamed, humiliated and disgraced in the eyes of his friends, neighbours, relatives, employers and the public at large. He demanded Rs4 million for the loss of credit and reputation and Rs1 million for agony and physical torture. Decreeing the suit as prayed with costs, Justice Jafferi noted that the plaintiff suffered the agony of a protracted trial at Multan.
