Couple gets possession of ‘grabbed’ land after 35 years

IHC directs bar council to take action against suspended lawyers

ISLAMABAD: After 35 years, a man was finally handed possession of a plot he had bought in the federal capital.

A court also suspended the licence of two lawyers — who are also facing contempt of court proceedings — who had been occupying a house built on the land.

Faiza and her husband Khawaja Abdul Sami had filed a petition in the Islamabad High Court (IHC) stating that they had applied for plots in the capital in the 1970s. While Sami was unsuccessful, Faiza’s name was drawn in the balloting for allotment of the Sector E-7 plot. The couple subsequently paid the price of the plot.

But years later, when Sami visited the site of what he believed would be his future home, he was shocked to find a building standing on top of it with people living in it. Ever since, he had been struggling to retrieve possession of his plot even as possession of the house built on top of it shuttled between various occupants, most recently landing with a lawyer Sohail Ahmed.

After another court-mandated eviction order was resisted by the lawyer, the IHC had earlier in the week ordered to immediately hand over possession of the two-Kanal-plot to the petitioner.

When the case was taken up again on Wednesday, the court asked Sami if he had been given possession of the property. To this, he replied in the affirmative and thanked the court for making it possible for him to retake possession of his land after three-and-a-half decades.

The police also submitted a compliance report before the court, stating that the possession of the property has been handed over to the petitioner.

Later, while speaking to the media, Sami said that he had fought long and hard for his property.

“I had to struggle a lot in this long legal fight,” Sami said.

Earlier, Islamabad’s Civil Judge Shaista Kundi had sent a bailiff to execute IHC’s orders. The bailiff visited the contentious property on December 8 to ask the illegal occupants to hand over possession to Sami.

Ahmed, however, together with several of his colleagues resisted efforts of the bailiff and other officials to evict them.

With the help of the police, the bailiff was finally able to secure possession of the land and hand it over to Sami. But the very next day, Sohail re-occupied the house in defiance of court orders.

The bailiff had later approached the police and submitted a separate complaint against the group of lawyers who resisted them. He said that the lawyers had allegedly attacked and threatened him.

Lawyers in the dock

Meanwhile, two lawyers — Ahmed and Mushtaq Gulbaz — who are facing contempt of court proceedings in the case, deliberately failed to appear before the IHC on Wednesday.

Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui had suspended the licences of the lawyers and had initiated contempt proceedings against them at the last hearing on December 18 for misbehaving in the courtroom.

Angered by their truancy, Justice Siddiqui warned that the court would issue arrest warrants for the lawyers should they fail to appear before the court at its next hearing. The court subsequently re-issued notices to the lawyers for January 9 and referred the matter to the bar council concerned for further proceedings against the lawyers.

The court also sent a copy of the order to the chairman of the election board of the bar council for appropriate action.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 21^st, 2017.