SHC issues notices to Dr Asim, Ziauddin Hospital’s management

The Sindh High Court issued notices to former petroleum minister Dr Asim Hussain, employees of the Dr Ziauddin Hospital’s North Nazimabad branch, the Karachi Development Authority’s director for anti-encroachments and other respondents in an amenity plot encroachment case.

The notices were issued over a National Accountability Bureau report that followed a petition against alleged occupation of a public park and a footpath by the private hospital’s management being run by Hussain, who is also the Karachi Division’s president of the Pakistan Peoples Party.

The petitioner, Rana Faizul Hasan, had submitted that the hospital administration had occupied the public park space for parking purposes in Block-B of North Nazimabad in violation of the law. 

He said the hospital management had also occupied the footpath and another piece of amenity land for parking purposes in Shireen Jinnah Colony. He requested the court to direct the Karachi Municipal Corporation (KMC) and other authorities concerned to restore the land to the public. 

During the proceedings, the petitioner had passed away; however, the court observed that since the matter pertained to public interest litigation, it would be heard.

The court observed that the record of the case reflected that the plot was hardly used for a playground; rather, it had been used for commercial purposes, including a marriage hall, which was against the terms and conditions of the lease. 

The court had directed the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau to investigate the conversion of the public park into the illegal parking lot and the marriage hall and submit a report within two months. It observed that commercial activities appeared to have resulted from connivance between the KMC, a hockey association and the Ziauddin Hospital.

A NAB investigation officer filed a report on compliance with a court order, submitting that former president Asif Ali Zardari’s close aide, Hussain, was among a dozen persons accused of the alleged illegal commercial use of 5.8 acres of amenity land.

The investigation officer said it had been established during the inquiry that the offence had been committed in active connivance of Hussain and 11 other people through an organised conspiracy and criminal breach of trust, depriving the public at large of a healthy activity and causing losses to the state for their personal illegal gains through China-cutting, money-laundering and breach of authority. 

The NAB report requested the accused to be prosecuted as per the law. It recommended that the inquiry be upgraded to an investigation under sections 18(3) and 24(a) of the NAB Ordinance so that the accused could be arrested.

In the report, the investigation officer named Hussain, Dr Ziauddin Hospital’s North Nazimabad branch’s deputy managing-director Syed Muhammad Shariq, ex-administrator Dr Yousuf Sattar, KDA anti-encroachment director Abdul Qadeer Mangi, North Nazimabad’s executive engineer Anwar Farooqui, former executive engineers Ahmed Shah and Khawaja Muhammad Usman, Irtteqa Hussain Zaidi, the late secretary of the Hockey Association West, Mohsin, its honorary secretary, Muhammad Farooq, and Ehtisham, the proprietor of two marriage halls, and brother-in-law of MQM’s ex-office bearer Waseem Aftab.

The court took the NAB report on its record and issued a notice to amicus curiae Faisal Siddiqui, the advocate-general of Sindh and 10 accused persons for March 23 to file their comments.