Monal raid: LHC issues notice to Punjab Food Authority

Contempt of court petition against authority

LAHORE: Lahore High Court (LHC) on Wednesday issued a notice to the Punjab Food Authority (PFA) on a citizen’s contempt of court petition.

Justice Mamoon Rasheed of LHC sought a reply from PFA Director General Ayesha Mumtaz by March 23 following the conclusion of arguments. The directive came on a petition by Monal Restaurant CEO Luqman Afzal. The counsel for the petitioner Advocate Azhar Siddique said that the court had instructed the PFA on May 23, 2015 to desist from publishing pictures of its raids across eateries as it damaged their business. He said the authority had carried out a raid at his client’s restaurant on February 23. Siddique said authority officials had taken photographs of the raid that were later uploaded across various Facebook pages. He said the PFA had not been doing this on its own page. Instead, he said, the authority had been doing so by creating bogus pages.

The counsel for the petitioner said Director General Mumtaz and her subordinates had committed contempt of court by orchestrating this and ought to be tried on this account. The petitioner had earlier filed another petition requesting that the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) be directed to fix responsibility for pages on Facebook where pictures of PFA raids were uploaded and proliferated. The court had directed the FIA to file a reply in connection with the aforementioned petition by April 20.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 17^th, 2016.