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KARACHI, Feb 21: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday restrained its official assignee from auctioning a plaza built on state land in execution of a decree in favour of a bank.
An 8,547-square-yard plot on Baba-i-Urdu Road, near steel market, was mortgaged by a builder with a commercial bank. The builder raised a commercial-cum-residential complex consisting 18 shops, 19 godowns and 43 flats and offices and sold them. He failed to repay the loan and the bank sued him for the loan’s recovery.
The suit was decreed and the SHC official assignee was asked to sell the property in order to satisfy the decree.
The provincial government and police department belatedly objected to the entire proceedings. As the execution application came up before Justice Nadeem Azhar Siddiqui, Additional Advocate-General M. Ahmed Pirzada filed an objection under the civil procedure code.
He produced an affidavit sworn by officiating AIG (Legal) claiming that the plot initially belonged to the central government, which transferred it to the provincial government for construction of houses for police officials. A few houses were constructed but a builder approached a former inspector-general of police for construction of an apartment complex.
The builder, the AAG maintained, mortgaged the land with the bank after signing the contract with the police department on the basis of a provisional transfer order. He said the builder deliberately defaulted on the repayment of loan and the bank sued him.
The plaintiff bank and the defendant builder were in complicity with each other and carried on collusive litigation.
The plot was owned by the government and could not have been mortgaged in the absence of a title deed but the bank accepted a mere transfer order as adequate security. He said the entire suit proceedings were vitiated by collusion.
Justice Siddiqui expressed his surprise how and why the government and the police department slept over their rights for such a long time and allowed not only the construction of a plaza on their land but did not join in the suit proceedings.
He observed that appropriate action should be taken against the officials involved in the attempt to deprive the government of its property.
Allowing the government plea, he restrained the official assignee from auctioning the plaza in execution of the degree passed in recovery suit.
DEMOLITION ORDERED: A division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Faisal Arab, meanwhile, ordered demolition of shops on the ground floor in Eastern Pride, a residential complex in Gulistan-i-Jauhar.
According to a petition moved by the purchasers and residents of flats in the complex through Advocates Hafiz Abdul Baqi and Raghib Baqi, the ground floor was reserved for car parking. After the booking of flats he surreptitiously built shops on the ground floor and got an amended plan sanctioned in connivance with corrupt officials of the Faisal Cantonment Board. The bench directed the cantonment board to demolish the shops and restore the car parking lot on the ground floor.
CONVICT RELEASED: Another division bench consisting of Justices Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Ali Sain Dino Metlo ordered the release of Imran, who was convicted by a Sri Lankan court for possessing two kilograms of heroin on his arrival in Colombo from Karachi in 1997.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment and was serving his jail term when he was repatriated to Pakistan in 2006 under a treaty between the two countries for exchange of prisoners.
Advocate Abul Razak filed a petition on his challenging his continued detention as illegal confinement.
He said under the repatriation treaty an accused was to be punished under the law of his home country. Pakistan’s Control of Narcotic Substances Act prescribed a maximum penalty of 14 years for those carrying more than two kilograms of heroin.
The offence was generally punishable with six or seven years in Pakistan but petitioner Imran has already served 10 years in Sri Lanka. His continued detention was unlawful.
The bench asked the Central Prison authorities to free the petitioner.
