KARACHI, June 11: The Sindh High Court has given the Karachi Building Control Authority two months to demolish a nine-storeyed building and issued contempt notices to KBCA chief, the builder and others.

The order, passed on a writ petition moved by the Maqbool Cooperative Housing Society, was announced by a division bench, headed by Chief Justice Saiyed Saeed Ashhad, on behalf of another division bench, comprising Justices M. Mujibullah Siddiqui and Syed Zawwar Hussain Jaffery, in the first week of June. The advocate-general was asked to prosecute the 'prima facie' contemners.

The building involved is the ground-plus-eight-floor 'Sumaya Terrace' on Alamgir Road behind the PTV Karachi Centre. The court had ordered its demolition initially in February 2000 and the KBCA had undertaken to comply with the court order. The building was, however, 'regularized' after partial demolition.

An appeal against the SHC order was dismissed by the Supreme Court. In March 2003, an FIR against the builder and his accomplices was registered under a court order.

The latest SHC order has, meanwhile, been challenged by the KBCA and the builder, Dawood Jan Mohammad, through Advocates Shahid Jamil Khan, Adul Hafeez Pirzada and Muneer A. Malik in the Supreme Court.

The SHC bench found that collusive 'regularization' of the partially demolished structure was initiated by the KBCA in January 2002 under the provisions of the Sindh Building Control Ordinance, 1979, which only sanctioned 'compounding of criminal offences'.

The 'regularization' also violated the court order and the KBCA's own undertaking to the court. The bench noted that the condonation was also violative of the subsequent regularization ordinance, which in any case applied only to buildings that were complete in all respects on the commencing day, that is, March 19, 2002.

The ordinance lapsed March 18, 2003. The bench ordered the prosecution of builder Dawood Jan Mohammad and his attorney Abdul Karim Khan; KBCA chief A.S. Nasir and buildings controllers Manzoor Qadir, Syed Mahmood Ali and Mumtaz Haider; architects Tasawar Abidi and Imran Farooqui; structural engineers Siddique Essa, Arif Kassam and Khalil Ahmed; sub-registrar Ghulam Haider Shah; and Iftikhar Kaimkhani of the city government's master plan group of offices for contempt.

HEARING ADJOURNED: A division bench of Sindh High Court, comprising Justice Sarmad Jalal Osmany and Justice Wahid Bux Brohi, on Friday adjourned the hearing of appeals filed by activists of banned Khudam-ul-Islam against their conviction in donation case, adds PPI.