KARACHI, Jan 28: The Sindh High Court directed the city district government of Karachi (CDGK) on Wednesday to decide the regularization cases of two marriage halls in accordance with the law and rules within three months.
The owner of the Mehwish Lawn (marriage hall) moved the court against the owners of the adjoining Arshi Lawn for causing congestion around it and blocking its access and parking lot.
He said his hall occupied a 1,000-square plot (D-5) on Rashid Minhas Road in Gulshan-i-Iqbal while the respondent's lawn initially covered 2,000 square yards on 'the unlawfully-merged' plots D-3 and D-4. The respondents acquired four more plots (C-5, C-6, D-8 and D-9) enlarging their area to a total of 5,200 square yards.
The petitioner alleged that while he had submitted his case for regularization of conversion of his premises from residential to commercial to the city district government, the entire area occupied by the respondents was illegally commercialized and amalgamated and they had not even approached the CDGK for regularization.
The respondents submitted that there were nine other commercial concerns, including restaurants, doing business on the lane and the congestion was not due to their operations alone. They said the petitioner and his guests had unhindered access and they had not occupied any parking space belonging to him.
Both the parties, however, agreed that the entire Rashid Minhas Road was among the roads commercialized by a provincial government notification in July 1998. The petitioner claimed that while he had approached the CDGK under the notification, the respondents had not.
The claim was contested by the Karachi Building Control Authority, which was also impleaded as a respondent besides the CDGK. Representing the KBCA, Advocate Shahid Jamil Khan submitted that the entire road was never declared commercial. Only parts of the road situated within KDA schemes 16 (Federal 'B' Area) and 36 (Gulistan-i-Jauhar) were commercialized. The stretch of the road on which the petitioner and respondent marriage halls were situated fell within the territorial limits of Gulshan-i-Iqbal and was exempted from its purview by the commercialization notification.
The KBCA counsel said both the petitioner and the private respondents were running their businesses in an exclusively residential area. It could not be commercialized under the law, he contended.
The division bench seized of the petition dismissed it. Justices Sabihuddin Ahmed and Zia Perwez, who constituted the bench, directed the CDGK to take a decision on the respective claims of the two parties on merit within three months.
NEWSMAN'S CASE: The Sindh High Court disposed of an habeas corpus petition agitating freelance journalist Khawar Mehdi Rizvi's arrest and detention when a federal government law officer produced a first information report registered against him.
Deputy Attorney-General Syed Zaki Mohammad informed the division bench seized of the petition that the accused was in the custody of the Crime Branch police, which had registered a case against him for sedition, criminal conspiracy and cheating by impersonation. Mr Rizvi was being dealt with in accordance with law outside the SHC jurisdiction and the petition was not maintainable, he submitted.
About the plea of the petitioner's counsel, Nadeem Qureshi, that he should be allowed to see the accused for half an hour, the DAG said the request should be made to the home secretary of Balochistan and the Balochistan High Court be moved for any further orders.
The bench, which consisted of Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and S. Ali Aslam Jafri, disposed of the petition in terms of the DAG's statement. Mr Rizvi has been booked for conducting two French journalists on an unauthorized visit to Quetta and the Pakistan-Afghan border for filming a documentary of the Taliban.
COPYRIGHT CASE: The Sindh High Court reserved its judgment on Wednesday on a suit instituted by a British publisher against infringement of its copyright by the National Book Foundation of Pakistan (NBF).
The publisher, Edward Arnold Limited, stated that it had acquired publication rights of the 23rd edition of a medical book titled 'Bailey's & Love's Short Practice of Surgery' from its authors. It owned the copyright on the work, which consists of articles by 54 eminent doctors and surgeons on the various aspects of surgery. The NBF had, however, copied, reprinted and reproduced the entire edition without any permission, licence or authority, the plaintiff maintained.
The NBF stated through Advocate Kiran Shaheen that it was a statutory organization and could reprint the work not only under the NBF Act but also under the Copyright Ordinance.
Appearing for the plaintiff, Advocate Navin Merchant submitted that section 10 (2) (A) of the ordinance read with its section 36 (3) did not extend blanket permission to it to reproduce books without their authors' permission. She relied on a stay order granted by Justice Zahid Kurban Alavi (since retired) to another British publisher against the NBF in an earlier suit holding that if the defendant's argument were to be accepted, the whole copyright law might well be declared redundant.
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