High court denies petitions for custody of orphans

LAHORE: The Lahore High Court on Thursday ordered that two minor brothers be shifted to an orphanage in order to keep them safe from their uncle and an employee, both of whom apparently wanted to usurp their property.

In his ruling Justice Ijaz Ahmed Chaudhry of the Lahore High Court also set restrictions on who could visit the orphans.

The judge also rebuked the SHO Shalimar for taking no action in the case.

The SHO was ordered to register a case against Iqbal, the family’s servant, and submit a progress report during the next hearing.

The judge passed the order after hearing a petition from Binyamin, who claimed to be an uncle of the two orphans, Afaq and Ishaq, but could not provide the court with any evidence to that effect.

Binyamin alleged that Iqbal had tortured to death the children’s mother, Zainab who was a running a hospital, in order to lay claim to this property. He said that Iqbal had used forged documents to claim before a civil court that he was a brother of the two children.

Iqbal’s counsel questioned Binyamin’s story. He said Binyamin could not be the children’s uncle as he was Christian while the children were Muslim.

The counsel disclosed that Binyamin had claimed to be the children’s father in the civil court.

After hearing the arguments the court ruled that both sides were concealing the truth in order to obtain control of the property.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 30^th, 2010.