ISLAMABAD, Feb 26: The Islamabad High Court, hearing a case regarding land encroachments and irregularities by the CDA officials on Tuesday, also received a letter from Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims) in which hospital staff proposed solutions to a recent encroachment by Bahria Town management.

Addressed to the civic agency, the letter was in response to the letter written to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences by the authority’s chairman, in which he had asked the hospital to comply with a February 1 court order to remove a recent encroachment in front of the hospital, as they plan to auction off the plot, which is worth billions of rupees.

The encroachment, “Bahria Dastar Khwan”, was built by Bahria Town management to provide free food to patients and their attendants.

Executive director Pims Dr Riaz Warriach, in his letter, suggested that those running the free food facility be informed that Pims was willing to provide them kitchen facilities, and that donations for the food could be made directly to the hospital, which would be “in the larger public interest”.

Otherwise, the letter continued, the management of the food-service area “should be given some other site so that the building is no longer in front of the hospital.”

The executive director of Pims, in his letter asked the CDA chairman to help in removing Bahria Dastar Khwan.

Security personnel had informed him, Dr Warriach wrote, that people from all over the city had been coming to receive free food from the structure, and then entered Pims premises as well, where “they are indulging in practices like smoking and littering.”

In the morning, the court continued hearings in the case of a kiosk improperly allotted to the sister-in-law of Interior Minister Rehman Malik in 2009, allegedly on “compassionate grounds.” Allegedly, the plot was later illegally transferred to a relative of her husband’s, Zaheer Hussain, who used it as a restaurant in Shalimar Park, in F-7/3, where he encroached on over two kanals of public land.

The court had, on February 1, asked Laeeq Yousafzai, the director of general administration for the Capital Development Authority, to submit a report on the matter of the allotment. Yousafzai’s report cleared senior officials, including deputy director general Mansoor Ahmed Khan, of responsibility in the matter.

Responding to a request to the CDA chairman, on February 18, to assign the inquiry to another officer, Shaista Sohail, member estate, submitted a new report, according to which Mansoor Ahmed Khan and Kamran Bakht, a CDA assistant director, were responsible for giving the kiosk to the wife of Khalid Malik.

Yousafzai was found guilty of exonerating senior officers and deliberately implicating retired lower-level staff. He was briefly detained in the courtroom, but Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui pardoned him at 1pm and allowed him to leave, and further hearings have been adjourned until March 15. The judge has asked the CDA chairman, however, to take disciplinary action against Mansoor Ahmed Khan and Kamran Bakht.