On the dark side of the Moon, again

Residents hope court will intervene on their behalf and hold builder and civic authorities accountable

KARACHI:

Naheed sits on a small brick outside the Moon Gardens apartment building in Gulistan-e Jauhar's Block 10. She is lost in thought - reminiscing about all the hard work and savings that had gone into buying their apartment that was sealed by the authorities last week. She absent-mindedly runs her fingers through her 10-year-old son's hair as she stares fixatedly at the main entrance of the apartment building.

"He was hardly two months old when we booked this flat," she says in a low voice, pointing towards her son. A tear rolls down her cheek. "I wanted a home of my own like every mother and wife."



Naheed still lives in a rented house in Gulshan-e-Iqbal. She and her husband had booked the apartment in Moon Gardens in 2005, but were only given its possession in April 2015. "We have invested everything in this apartment, but were unable to even shift into it," she said.

So desperate was she to get the apartment that her husband had even paid an extra Rs0.2 million to the builder recently to get the possession. "They weren't giving us the possession and were demanding more money," she said, adding that she and her husband had borrowed money from their relatives to give to the builder. "The actual cost of the flat was Rs1.6 million, but it cost us Rs1.8 million," she insisted.

Naheed's is not the only such story. Hundreds like her have suffered at the hands of the Moon Garden's fraudulent builder, Abdul Razzak Khamosh. The Sindh High Court has already ordered the police authorities to produce him in court and initiate an inquiry against him. These directives were issued on an appeal in a case involving the controversy over the 4000 acre piece of land belonging to the Pakistan Railways in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.



Fooled twice

Sixty-year-old Muhammad Bashir, who works as a security guard at a bank, roams frantically outside the Moon Garden, holding onto a yellow-coloured polythene bag dearly , which contains the documents of his shop. He was about to claim its possession, he says.

Bashir is desperate for news and asks several of the scores of people standing outside the apartments for any update.

Bashir told The Express Tribune that he has suffered twice at the hands of Khamosh, the builder. In 1993, he had booked an apartment in Moon Arcade at Star Gate, which was a project by the same builder.



"I paid Rs170,000 for that flat in installments," he said, adding that since those flats were also built on disputed land, they were soon encroached upon.

The builder, according to him, gave him the option to get a shop in Moon Gardens or forget about the money he had invested in Moon Arcade. Bashir had decided to go for shop - he was disappointed again. "Having a shop in Gulistan-e-Jauhar was also not a bad deal," he said, adding that he had paid Rs200,000 more to get the shop.

Bashir has two children who have just finished their intermediate. "I wanted to run the shop to make enough money to send them to university," he said. "But I guess they'll also end up becoming security guards."

Legal opinion

All is not lost for the residents though. Sindh High Court advocate Malik Asif told The Express Tribune that in this particular case, if the residents prove to the court that they had verified all the documents, the decision could be in their favour.



He said that the builder, the Karachi Development Authority, the Sindh Building Control Authority and the state could be held responsible and criminal, and a civil liability could also be imposed on them.

"The builder's assets could be liquidated, but that would be at a much later stage," he said, adding that the court would have to find a way. However, he was of the opinion that, most likely, the residents would not be thrown out of their homes as the Pakistan Railways would be compensated after the liquidation of the builder's assets.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 16^th, 2015.