MANSEHRA, July 29: Upholding a Peshawar High Court judgment, a full bench of the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal of the NWFP government against a Mansehra-based NGO, Aurat Association.

The bench comprising Justice Munir A. Sheikh, Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry and Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar ruled that the government had violated the law while dissolving the executive body of the association.

On Oct 18, 2000, a circuit bench of the high court had ordered the restoration of the AA’s executive body, unfreezing it’s accounts and assets and dismissal of the ad hoc committee set up by the NWFP’s Social Welfare Department.

Syed Sajjad Hassan Shah appeared for the AA.

Social welfare department officials on the directives of the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999 had suspended the executive body of the association, frozen it’s accounts and taken away all it’s assets on political grounds.

Malik Akbar, chief coordinator of the AA, moved the Peshawar High Court, circuit bench Abbottabad, in a writ petition against the order of the former premier.

The PHC accepted the AA’s petition on Oct 18, 2000 and ordered the release of all of its accounts and assets and dismissed the four-member ad hoc committee constituted by the local social welfare officer to run the AA’s affairs.

The SWD filed an appeal in the Supreme Court against the judgment of the PHC which was dismissed by the supreme court. A copy of the decision which the apex court announced in Islamabad on July 25 was provided to the press by the AA’s coordinator here on Monday.

A suit for recovery of Rs4 million in damages filed by the AA against the SWD is pending in the civil court of Mansehra.