Building clean-up: SHC orders police to protect residents

Bench asks petitioner’s counsel to seek a legal remedy to establish the right of ownership.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court ordered the city police on Tuesday to protect the residents of a residential/commercial complex so that they can clean the parking and prayer area in the building’s basement.

The SHC division bench, comprising Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Imam Bux Baloch, was hearing a constitutional petition filed by Abdul Waheed, a resident of Horizon Plaza, Saddar, who maintained that the respondents Aamir Hussain Ghumro, Azam Afridi, Darwesh and others forcibly entered the flat complex, harassed women and spread sewage in the basement.

The court had earlier on issued notices to the Saddar TPO and other senior police officials in the case.

During the hearing, it came to the fore that there was an ownership dispute between the respondents and the petitioner.

The bench then asked the petitioner’s counsel to seek a legal remedy to establish the right of ownership and, as a relief, ordered the police to provide the residents protection so that they could clean up the basement on their own. The bench later adjourned the hearing, seeking a compliance report.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 26^th, 2011.