ISLAMABAD, Feb 1: As luck would have it for former president Gen (retired) Pervez Musharraf, the ownership case regarding his Chak Shahzad farmhouse has been transferred from Islamabad High Court to the district courts where already over 20,000 civil suits are pending for years.

The ownership of the Rs23.75 million farmhouse was among the over 1,300 cases of less than pecuniary value of Rs100 million transferred to the district courts in January after the parliament approved an amendment to the IHC Act 2010, enhancing the minimum value of a civil suit from Rs10 million to Rs100 million.

After an anti-terrorism court of Rawalpindi on August 27, 2011, attached the property of Mr Musharraf, including the farmhouse, in the Benazir Bhutto murder case, his spouse approached the IHC in September last year with a claim that her husband had gifted the farmhouse to her in 2008.

The IHC on Sept 23 maintained the status quo on her petition in which the former first lady maintained that her husband had bought the farmhouse on Nov 10, 2003, and in 2008 verbally gifted it to her after getting physical possession and she started construction work at the site.

The court also sought reply from Capital Development Authority (CDA) but despite the lapse of more than four months, the authority did not file the reply.

The CDA legal adviser, Mohammad Ramzan Chaudhry told Dawn that the reply now would be submitted to the district courts.

He said in the lower judiciary where due to limited number of judicial officers already over 30,000 cases were pending, the disposal of Musharraf's farmhouse case would likely be delayed.

Advocate Nayyab Hassan Gardezi, who represented Ms Musharraf in the case in the IHC, said the petitioner did not cause any delay.

He said after transfer of the case to the lower judiciary, the stay order issued by Justice Riaz Ahmed Khan of the IHC would remain intact. “And until or unless the stay order is vacated or the case is decided, the ownership of the farmhouse would remain in the name of the current owner.”

Special prosecutor of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in the Benazir Bhutto assassination case Mohammad Azhar Chaudhry, however, said the farmhouse was attached by a competent court of law, because Mr Musharraf, an accused in the case, continuously remained absent. The court had also declared him a proclaimed offender in the case.

The confiscation of his property including the farmhouse was in the process when Ms Musharraf got the stay order, he added.

It may be mentioned that due to increasing workload, the IHC administration in April 2011 asked the ministry of law and justice to increase the pecuniary value of civil suits. And after the legislation, 1,326 civil suits were transferred to the lower courts and currently only 463 civil suits of more than Rs100 million are pending in the IHC.