Sindh

In court: SHC orders arrest of builder for illegal project

The judges also directed that the name of the builder may also be put on the Exit Control List

Our Correspondent November 11, 2015

PHOTO: PPI

KARACHI:

The Sindh High Court (SHC) ordered on Wednesday the police authorities to arrest the builder involved in illegally building a residential project, Moon Garden, on the land belonging to the Pakistan Railways Cooperative Housing Society.

A division bench, headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, directed them to produce the builder, Abdul Razak Khamosh, before the court on November 18.

These directives were issued on an appeal into a case involving controversy over the piece of land belonging to the Pakistan Railways in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.

Hearing the case on November 3, the bench had issued a show-cause notice to additional Karachi IG Mushtaq Maher to explain why contempt proceedings should not be initiated against him for non-compliance of the court’s September 29 order. Previously, the court had ordered him to get the residential project vacated within a month.

As neither the project was vacated nor was any report filed, the court had issued a show-cause notice to Maher, calling for an explanation as to why he may not be proceeded against for contempt of the court orders.

During Wednesday’s proceedings, Mahar appeared before the court in response to the show-cause notice. The police chief filed his written explanation, informing the court that there are 100 flats in the Moon Garden project, of whom many have already been vacated. He said the few remaining will also be vacated soon.

The judges ordered the police chief to ensure that the remaining flats are also vacated at the earliest and directed that the provision of utilities also be suspended to the illegal project.

The bench ordered him to ensure that the builder, Khamosh, who had launched this project illegally, should be arrested and produced before the court. On hearing this, the judges further directed that the name of the builder may also be put on the Exit Control List in order to stop him from fleeing the country.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 12^th, 2015.

COMMENTS (1)

Hassan | 8 years ago | Reply The Moon Garden in not a single issue as there is a lot of land occupied by builder mafia and land mafia. The fact is that the complex not build in a single night. It should have taken some years to construct a huge plaza. The question is very simple how KBCA approved map (if not) than why building control authority did not take action at the time of its construction, secondly on what grounds Karachi Electric and other departments provide utility connections to the said project, thirdly according to some residents they have ownership documents from concerned department than who is responsible for this documentation and last but not least why the railway officials remained silent on this important issue since long. Land grabbing has become a fashion in Karachi as KDA failed to take action against land grabbers, encroachers and builder mafia due to the involvement of some officials of the department as it is impossible without the support and backing of concerned officials to grab a single inch of any govt land in the city. Its also an eye-opener for railways department to make survey of their land in other parts of the city specially at the routes of defunct circular railway.

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