PESHAWAR, May 5: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday disposed of a writ petition of an Arab woman and her Pakistani husban and directed the federal government to expeditiously process her application for Pakistani citizenship.
A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Ijazul Hassan observed that the plea was premature as the government had yet not denied citizenship to the petitioner.
The bench observed that the visa of petitioner Ms Sheikha Muhammad Hamoud Alhamdi was valid till June 18 and till that date she could legally stay in Pakistan.
Petitioner Sheikha had come from the United Arab Emirate to Karak, a southern district of the NWFP, on April 7 and married her former family driver Juma Raz Khan the same day. Since then she had been fearing arrest and deportation to her country.
A panel of lawyers comprising Zafar Abbas Zaidi, Farmanullah Khattak and Ms Mussarat Hillali appeared for the petitioner. They contended that Ms Sheikha was in Pakistan on a valid visa which would expire on June 18. She applied to the interior ministry for grant of Pakistani citizenship on the grounds that her husband is Pakistani, but the the matter had not been decided yet.
A section officer of the federal interior ministry, Muhammad Salahuddin, appeared before the court and stated that they had not received any application from Ms Sheikha.
The petitioner’s counsel rebutted the claim, produced receipts of a courier company and stated that the application had ben sent through courier service.
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Salahuddin Khan stated that the ministry had not received any application. He further said that the application, purportedly sent by the petitioner, was not submitted in accordance with the Citizenship Act.
The DAG argued that an application for citizenship had to be submitted on a proper proforma along with relevant documents. He said the interior ministry had various sections and it was not known to which section the said application had been sent.
The bench, however, observed that an ordinary citizen could not be aware of these technicalities and even if the application had reached a wrong section it should have been referred to the section concerned.
Justice Tariq observed that if the ministry had not received the application, it could be handed over to the section officer in the court.
The court asked the petitioner to give her application to the section officer and directed the ministry to properly inform the petitioner of flaws, if any, in her application.
The bench observed that a writ petition could not be entertained in the absence of a cause of action.
It pointed out that in the cited case of Indian national Dr Hafsa Aman, she was denied citizenship and was asked to leave the country, whereas in the present case the government had not yet given a response or issued a deportation order.
Meanwhile, the high court will hear on May 9 a petition file by Juma Raz Khan seeking quashment of an FIR registered against him and his two brothers at the police station in Karak city. In the FIR they have been charged with keeping the Arab woman in illegal confinement.