ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) has directed the Capital Development Authority (CDA) to evict police officials illegally occupying 200 government flats since 2007. The court also ordered registration of criminal cases against the officials for encroaching on CDA’s properties.

An IHC division bench comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani and Justice Tariq Mehmood Jahangiri while deciding an intra-court appeal of the CDA declared that the police officials were illegally occupying the flats for 16 years.

The court directed the IGP Islamabad and the secretary interior “to register criminal cases against all the officials/employees of Police Department, who have illegally occupied the flats by force with further direction of initiating departmental action and submitting a compliance report before this Court within one month.”

The CDA had constructed 200 apartments at G-6/1, Aabpara, at a cost of Rs105 million for the Ministry of Housing and Works. When the flats were about to be handed over to the Estate Office in 2005, they were offered to the affected people of the October 2005 earthquake as temporary shelters.

In 2007, before the Lal Masjid operation, police officials occupied these apartments. When the Estate Office tried to evict them the same year, some of the officials approached Lahore High Court (LHC)’s Rawalpindi bench and obtained a stay order which motivated their colleagues to occupy the vacant apartments.

The counsel for the CDA adopted before the IHC that the police officials had forcibly occupied the flats under the garb of Lal Masjid operation. He contended that all the flats were constructed by the CDA and so far the amounts spent on them had not been reimbursed by the Estate Office.

The counsel argued that Supreme Court had taken suo motu notice of the matter and the IGP had assured the apex court to get vacated all the flats from illegal occupation of the police officials. However, no fruitful result has been achieved, he said.

An assistant attorney general and officials from the Police Department, on the other hand, contended that a committee had been constituted to examine the matter.

The bench observed that illegal occupation of the flats by the police officials “is a clear case of highhandedness on the part of police officials, IGP as well as Secretary, Ministry of Interior, and they were responsible for encroachment on these flats. Till date they have neither valid allotment nor subject flats were handed over to the Ministry of Housing and Works.”

Even otherwise, the police officials have failed to substantiate their illegal occupation of the flats on the basis of any legal permission, the bench added.

The court observed that the Police Department had to uphold the law, but in this case they had occupied the property by force. such an act clearly falls within the ambit of illegality and highhandedness on the part of police officials who are liable to be prosecuted, it added.

Published in Dawn, February 26th, 2023