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KARACHI: The army has demolished the boundary wall of the Quaid-i-Azam House Museum — a national monument which is protected under the heritage conservation and protection of antiquities laws — despite the Sindh Culture Department requests to the contrary, it emerged on Friday.
Sources said the demolition of the beautiful stone structure had been carried out in phases by Corps V though the culture department had asked army officers, including a colonel, not to carry out such activities on the premises protected under the laws.
Located at the junction of Sharea Faisal and Fatima Jinnah Road, the beautiful ground-plus-one-storey structure was designed by M. So make and constructed with Gizri sandstone in the second half of the 19th century.
During a recent visit to the Quaid-i-Azam House, the boundary wall of the historical building was found partly replaced by an iron grill.
It emerged that after the demolition of a block of the wall and replacing it with the grill last week, the work had been stopped for a few days.
On Friday morning, the demolition team reappeared on the premises and started razing another block of the wall. However, they left after damaging part of it, said museum staffers.
The Quaid-i-Azam House is protected under the federal government’s Antiquities Act 1975 as well as the Sindh Cultural Heritage Act, which do not allow such activities in the protected sites and prescribe long prison terms and heavy fines for violators, according to reliable sources.
According to the laws, anybody, including the owner who destroys, removes, injures, alters, defaces a protected heritage maintained by the government under this act, or in respect of which agreement has been executed under Section 8, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to three years or a fine which may extend to Rs 100,000 or with both.
‘No permission granted’
Responding to Dawn queries, Sindh Culture Department Director Qasim Ali Qasim said: “The Quaid-i-Azam House Museum is a protected heritage site and the department cannot allow its destruction.”
He said the department had not given any permission to anybody, including Corps V of the Pakistan Army, to demolish the boundary wall of the protected site, which was a violation of the conservation acts.
The director said that the museum in charge had sent an incomplete report to him regarding the destruction. He had directed the official to submit the comprehensive report after which further action on this ‘very serious’ matter would be taken.
The sources said that official in charge of the museum Naheed Zehra, in her report on the subject “Damage caused to boundary wall by the headquarters Engineers 5 Corps”, had regretted that the boundary wall in front of the main gate of the Quaid-i-Azam Museum had been damaged.
It had been “will fully broken by the Headquarters Engineers 5-Corps” though they were instructed not to do that, the report stated.
It added that Col Atif was briefed about the procedure of initiating work on the protected site for which they had to take prior permission from the competent authority. But instead of obtaining the permission, “they have broken the wall” of the national monument, the report stated.
In her report, she urged the department to take necessary action against those responsible for the “will full destruction caused to the national monument by headquarters Engineers 5-Corps”.
Historical significance
Built in the second half of the 19th century, the bungalow front façade is embellished with finely chiselled and carved features and rest of the structure in hammer-dressed stone masonry.
In 1943, the Quaid-i-Azam visited the building with the intention of acquiring it. Though owned by Sorab Kavasji and Dina Katrak, the bungalow had been requisitioned as the residence of General Hind, GOC.
The purchase deed in the name of “Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Barrister at Law, Bombay,” was registered in March 1944 and after the partition of the subcontinent the Quaid’s belongings and furniture were brought here from his houses in Delhi and Bombay.
Following his death, his sister Fatima Jinnah lived here from 1948 to 1964. Afterwards the bungalow lay neglected until 1985 when it was finally acquired by the government, restored and declared as a national monument as the Quaid-i-Azam House Museum.
(Historical details of the Quaid-i-Azam House Museum (Flag Staff House) courtesy Yasmeen Lari’s book “The Dual City: Karachi During the Raj.”
