SC orders removal of all encroachment from Karachi’s Kidney Hill Park

SC orders removal of all encroachment from Karachi’s Kidney Hill Park

Maqbool Ahmed
December 28, 2021

SC orders removal of all encroachment from Karachi’s Kidney Hill Park

KARACHI: The Supreme Court of Pakistan on Tuesday ordered the full restoration of the Kidney Hill Park by removing all encroachment including a recently cropped up graveyard.

The order was given by a two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Gulzar Ahmed and Justice Qazi Muhammad Amin Ahmed while hearing at apex court’s Karachi registry several civil miscellaneous applications regarding encroachment in the park spread over 62 acres.

The bench rejected a claim of an applicant regarding allotment of the land to Al-Fatah Masjid and held that a document being claimed by the applicant as a lease deed was only a license given to the applicant.

The bench observed that the layout plan of the park provided by the Ministry of Housing and Works has no provision for any mosque, therefore the construction of the mosque was against the layout plan.

Construction of mosque under the Islamic law is only permissible on the land which was procured after paying sale price fully, observed the bench.

The bench declared that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation had no authority to allot land for the mosque and the license given by it in 1983 to a purported trust was ex facie illegal as it did not give the title of the land to anyone.

Declaring the license illegal, the bench also cancelled the land given under it for Al-Fatah Masjid and restored its land to the park.

By the same legal yardstick, the bench also ordered the removal of Bismillah Masjid constructed on the parkland observing that prayer could be said in the park anywhere but mosque could not be built as it was not provided in its layout plan.

Regarding the graveyard, the bench held the layout plan also has no provision for it and if someone is found buried there then their remains should be shifted to a properly established graveyard.

The bench also ordered for the closing gate of a house that opens in the park and directed the authorities to construct a wall there to stop access to the park from that point.

The bench directed KMC to allow entry into the park through the main gate and appoint security guards there who should be provided licensed arms.

Hill Park Houses

The bench also directed occupants of four houses that were demolished being declared constructed by encroaching the land of Hill Park to initiate civil proceedings for recovering their compensation.

The apex court by an earlier order had declared that 13 houses were built by encroaching Hill Park’s land and were liable to be demolished.

The owners of four houses through their counsel apprised the SC bench that only their house had been demolished by commissioner Karachi while the remaining houses had been left alone.

The owners of the demolished house submitted that they had purchased the land from PECHS which committed fraud with them and they deserved to be compensated for the monetary loss they suffered.

On Tuesday the SC bench directed them to file a civil suit for recovery of damages before a court of competent jurisdiction expecting the suit would be decided within a year.