ISLAMABAD/LAHORE, March 29: The Supreme Court’s staff on Saturday raided the house of deposed Justice Khalilur Rahman Ramday and took away some important files and documents, sources said.

The staff also collected household articles and dumped them in a room, the sources said.

Late in the night, the prime minister ordered the restoration of the house to justice Ramday and asked his home affairs adviser to conduct an investigation.

Athar Minallah, a senior lawyer, told Dawn that the raid was conducted on the orders of Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar.

Two officials of the Supreme Court — a deputy registrar and an additional registrar who were accompanied by a PWD caretaker — arrived at the Justice Ramday’s house in the Judicial Colony between 6:30pm and 7:00pm, he said, adding that they asked the two house servants to let them enter the house.

When they refused to open the gates, they broke the locks and entered the house, he said.

Mr Minallah said that they combed the house and collected some papers.

He said that Rehman Malik, adviser to prime minister on interior and narcotics, had told him on phone that an inquiry had been ordered and the investigation would be completed within 24 hours.

Mr Malik termed it a conspiracy against the elected government.

A senior official told Dawn that the city administration, police or the interior ministry were not involved in the move.

He said that the interior ministry had ordered the inquiry. In Lahore, Justice Ramday said he had kept the record and the verdict of an important case at his Islamabad residence.

President of the Supreme Court Bar Association Aitzaz Ahsan told Dawn that the material that Justice Ramday was talking about “might be his detailed judgment in the case concerning the reinstatement of the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry”.

Justice Ramday said his assistant had phoned him from Islamabad and told him that Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar had ordered court officials to have the residence vacated. These officials had broken the locks and started taking out furniture and other household items, he said.

“It is an inappropriate and uncivilised action, aimed at sabotaging the process of the restoration of judges started by the prime minister’s order to release them,” he said.

PM orders probe: Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani has asked his adviser on home affairs, Rehman Malik, to investigate the incident in which the house of Justice Khalilur Rehman Ramday was ransacked.

Information Secretary of the PPP, Sherry Rehman, said late on Saturday neither was the prime minister’s house aware of the incident nor the government had anything to do with it.

She said the PPP-led government could never think of carrying out such action.

Rehman Malik has been asked to submit a report to the prime minister by Sunday morning.

In a late night development on the intervention of Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani, in consultation with the Supreme Court, the matter was resolved and household items of Justice Ramday returned to place.