KARACHI, Jan 4: A division bench of the Sindh High Court restrained the police from harassing officials of the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation and issued an SHO and other respondents notices for Jan 17 in a KESC petition for quashment of a first information report registered against its officials.

The KESC maintained in its petition filed through Advocate Khalid Mahmood Siddiqui that the owners of two marble factories owed the corporation Rs 9.1 million in outstanding electricity bills since 1999.

They filed scores of petitions and suits to obtain stay orders and avoid payment of the dues. An application for restraining the KESC from recovering the amount was dismissed by Justice Maqbool Baqar recently.

After dismissal of several suits and petitions, the owners of the two concerns got a criminal case registered against unnamed KESC officials. The complainant also alleged that the officials installed a new electricity meter in 1999 but did not return the old meter removed by them only to burden them with a hefty bill. The KESC officials, the complainant alleged, were guilty of criminal breach of trust under Sections 403, 406 and 424 of the Pakistan Penal Code. The case was registered by the Peerabad police station, Sindh Industrial and Trading Estate, Karachi, and KESC officials were facing harassment at the hands of police.

The KESC counsel alleged that the case was patently mala fide and the allegations had been subject of prolonged litigation initiated by the factory owners in the high court.

He requested the court to order quashment of the FIR and ask the police, in the meanwhile, not to harass the officials.

A division bench, comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui, issued notices to the Peerabad SHO and other respondents for Jan 17 and restrained the police in the meantime.