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KARACHI, March 20: The Sindh High Court restrained the city district government from taking any coercive measure to resume a plot being used by a trust for its mosque and madrassah in Gulistan-i-Jauhar.
Faizan Raza Trust submitted through Advocate Mohammad Sharif that plot ST-9, Block II, Scheme 36, was in its use with the permission of the federal housing ministry since 1992 when the scheme was conceived by the Karachi Development Authority. The city district government now intended to resume its land and demolish its structures terming its possession illegal.
Issuing a notice to the city government for a date in office, a division bench comprising Justices Mushir Alam and Justice Yasmeen Abbasy restrained it from taking coercive measures to dispossess the petitioner trust, which was asked to refrain from raising any new construction or change the complexion of the property.
PETITION ADMITTED: Another division bench consisting of Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Gulzar Ahmed admitted a petition moved by Mst Khurshid Begum through Advocate Khwaja Naveed Ahmed.
The petitioner said she was allotted a plot in Sharafi Goth in 1957. The ‘goth’ was later taken over by the provincial government and she was allotted a plot in Darus Salam Co-operative Housing Society, Korangi. The allotment was, however, cancelled in 1984 for alleged non-payment of development charges.
She challenged the cancellation before an arbitration council under the Co-operative Societies Act. The council ruled in her favour but the decision was overturned by the co-operatives minister in appeal.
Admitting the petition, the bench confirmed the stay granted earlier in the petitioner’s favour and restrained the respondents from creating third party interest in the property.
DETENTION CASE: The division bench comprising Justices Mohammad Afzal Soomro and Rahmat Hussain Jafferi, meanwhile, adjourned the petition and contempt application moved by Din Mohammad Zaidi against the detention of his son, Dr Ali Raza Zaidi under the Security of Pakistan Act.
The petitioner’s counsel, Rasheed A. Razvi submitted that the detainee was taken into custody on his arrival in Karachi from Dubai in July 2006. A Federal Investigation Agency official misled the court by filing an affidavit that Dr Zaidi never arrived in Karachi. It was only a complaint to the President’s House that confirmed his arrival in Karachi.
The counsel said the detainee’s arrest under the 1952 Security Act was illegal. The federal government’s standing counsel Mahmood Alam Rizvi sought time for filing comments on behalf of the ministry of interior and the bench adjourned further proceedings to March 29.
