Seven SBCA, KMC officials obtain pre-arrest bail in Nasla Tower case

The Sindh High Court (SHC) on Friday granted pre-arrest bail to officials of the Sindh Building Control Authority (SBCA) and Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) in the Nasla tower road encroachment case.

Some SBCA, KMC and Sindhi Muslim Cooperative Housing Society (SMCHS) officials were separately by the police and Anti-Corruption Establishment over charges of misuse of powers and encroachments on public land after directions of the Supreme Court.

According to the prosecution, private builders in connivance of the SBCA, SMCHS and KMC officials encroached upon 381 square yards without any legal title documents and later approved the building plan for the construction of Nasla Tower on 1,121 square yards despite the area of the plot in the sub-lease was 780 square yards.

Former and present officials of the SBCA and KMC including Wilayat Ali Data, Ashkar Dawar, Ali Mehdi Kazmi, Farhan Qaiser, Khawaja Badiuzzaman, Ali Ghufran and Syed Mohammad Zia approached the SHC for obtaining interim protective bail.

Their counsels Ahmed Masood, Shariq A Razzak and Mohammad Arif submitted that the applicants were officials of the SBCA and KMC and wanted to join the proceedings before the court but apprehended arrest at the hands of ACE and police.

A single SHC bench headed by Justice Mohammad Saleem Jessar without touching the merit of the case, granted protective pre-arrest bail to the applicants with a surety of Rs50,000 each. The high court observed that the interim bail would cease to have its effect on January 27 or whenever applicants surrendered before the court.

It is pertinent to mention that ACE registered a case against 21 persons including former SBCA director general Manzoor Qadir Kaka, SMCHS Chairman Ghalib Mansoor, secretary Naveed Bashir and owner Muzammil Amin Darzi over fraud and misuse of powers, and anti-corruption laws.