PHC stays demolition of three Hindu temples, Sikh gurdwara

 Notices issued to Evacuee Trust Property Board, others

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Monday stayed demolition of three Hindu temples and a Sikh gurdwara for erecting a commercial plaza.  

A two-member bench comprising Justice Nisar Hussain Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth restrained the departments concerned from demolishing the temples and the gurdwara till the next order of the court.

The bench issued the order in a writ petition filed by a lawyer Muhammad Muazzam Butt. The court said there would be no change in Camp No987, which is an area of about 32 marlas wherein the three Hindu temples and the gurdwara are located.

It issued a notice to the Evacuee Trust Property Board, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government through Secretary Home and Ministry of Religious Affairs and Interfaith Harmony through its secretary.

Arguing the case, the lawyer submitted that the Assistant Administrator of the Evacuee Trust Property Board, Asif Khan, had finalised an agreement with an individual Ikram Shinwari, a resident of Landikotal in the Khyber Agency, for construction of a plaza on the places of temples and gurdwara.

The lawyer stated that after partition of India, the Muslims from Jammu and Poonch (Kashmir) were massacred. The survivors migrated and were accommodated in different areas of Pakistan, including the-then North West Frontier Province (now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa).

He said some of the survivors from Poonch and Jammu areas of Kashmir were accommodated in the Camp No987 in Andar Shehr. They continued to live in the camp since then as refugees.

Muazzam Butt said the camp was named Kashmiri Camp and is known accordingly. He said the camp presently had 13 houses of Kashmiri refugees.

The lawyer submitted that the Kashmiri Camp was owned by the Evacuee Trust Property Board and Kashmiris were settled there on a permanent basis.

He said the assistant administrator of the ETPB had asked the residents to either vacate the premises or they would be paid an agreed amount as done with Ikram Shinwari, because the department has agreed with him to construct a plaza at the site of the Kashmiri Camp.

Following the entire arrangement, he said that plaza was to be constructed by Ikram Shinwari and the temples and gurdwara were to be demolished.

The lawyer said a gurdwara existed in the past in the adjacent property of the trust, but that was demolished and a plaza constructed on the site, which is called the Sona Tower.

He said the petitioner was also an aggrieved person as he himself was the son of a refugee from Jammu. According to him, after the Partition his entire family comprising his grandparents, uncles and aunties were murdered in the Ryasi district of Jammu and Kashmir.

Whereas in Pakistan too, he stated that it was also a constitutional obligation of us as citizens to persuade the government for protecting the holy places of minorities in Pakistan.

He requested the court to restrain the respondents from demolishing or damaging or changing the nature of the trust property of Kashmir Camp located at Asamai Gate in Ander Shehr till the decision of the writ petition.