' This is an application under sections 2 and 3 of the Contempt of Court Act, 1976, praying for action under the said Act against the two respondents, for violating an order made by the learned IVth Senior Civil Judge and Assistant Sessions Judge, Karachi, on 14-4-1976. The application has been made under the following circumstances.
2. The applicant Altaf Ahmed is the transferee of a portion of the ground floor of evacuee property bearing Survey No, R. C. 12/73, Ranchore Lines, Ambagi Road, Karachi. Respondent No, 1, Fazal Din, is said to be the owner of undivided half share of the remaining ground floor and the upper floors of the said building. The remaining half of the ground floor and the upper floors is said to have been in occupation of and allotted to different persons. As respondent No, 1 started demolishing the building, and the demolition operations carried on by him adversely affected the property allotted to the petitioner, the latter filed a civil suit, being Suit No, 811/75, in the Court of the learned 4th Senior Civil Judge and Assistant Sessions Judge, Karachi. Alongwith the plaint, the petitioner made an application under Order XXXIX, rules 1 and 2, praying that respondent No, 1 herein, his contractors, agents, successors in interest, legal heirs, administrators, etc. Be restrained from demolishing the property in question. On this application, the learned Senior Civil Judge, on 14-4- 1975, ordered issuance of notice and also directed status quo to be maintained till 18-4-1975. The order of status quo was extended by a subsequent order till 8-7-1975. It is alleged that during the continuance of this status quo order respondents Nos, 1 and 2, in violation of the said order, carried out demolition proceedings in the said building. It appears that a complaint regarding the demolition proceedings was made to the learned Senior Civil Judge, who on 13-6-1975, appointed a learned Advocate as Commissioner for the purpose of inspecting the site in the presence of the parties and submitting a report. The learned Advocate, on the same day, inspected the site and submitted his report to the Court, wherein he stated that demolition proceedings had been recently carried on in the building in question and were in fact being carried on the date that he inspected the building and that these demolition proceedings were being carried on by men of respondent No, 1.
3. Respondent No, 1, however, in his counter-affidavit, has completely denied having ordered or undertaken any demolition proceedings after the issuance of the status quo order by the Court. On the other hand, respondent No, 2, who is the Assistant Architect Control in the Karachi Municipal Corporation, has taken the responsibility for having undertaken the demolition proceedings. His case, as set out in his counter-affidavit, is that the building in question was in a dangerous and ruinous state and consequently as early as on 30-1-1973; he had issued a notice under section 79 of the Municipal Administration Ordinance, 1960, to the owners and others concerned regarding carrying out of necessary repairs to the building. It is alleged that since the necessary repairs were not carried out, the building was inspected by the Dangerous Buildings Inspection Team on 27-3- 1975, which came to the conclusion that the entire building except the godown of Messrs Shahab Paints House was in a dangerous state. In consequence of this decision and declaration a notice was issued to respondent No, 1 under the Sind Peoples Local Government Ordinance, 1972, requiring him to demolish the building within 7 days, and warning him that if compliance of the notice was not made within 7 days of its receipt, the building would be demolished by the Corporation at his risk and cost. Photostat, copy of this notice, which is dated 8-4-1975, has been produced which shows that a copy of the notice was pasted on site and also another copy was sent to the petitioner. Respondent No, 2, in his affidavit, has stated that since respondent No, 1 failed to demolish the building, he, in exercise of the powers conferred on the Municipal Corporation by paragraph 3, under the sub-heading 'Building Control', of Part I of Schedule 2 to the Sind Peoples Local Government Ordinance, 1972, carried out the demolition work. Thus, respondent No, 2 has taken upon himself the entire responsibility for the demolition of the building in question and has completely exonerated respondent No, 1.
4. I haver heard Mr. Rashiduddin, counsel for the petitioner, Mr. Muslim Naqvi, Assistant Legal Advisor for the Karachi Municipal Corporation and the learned Advocate-General. Respondent No, 1, Fazal Din, is said to have expired during the pendency of the contempt application and therefore proceedings against him have abated.
5. The learned counsel for the petitioner conceded that in view of the counter-affidavit by respondent No, 2, the entire responsibility for the demolition of the building rested on the said respondent. His contention, however, was that though the said respondent was not a party to the proceedings before the learned Senior Civil Judge and the status quo order was not expressely directed towards him, the said respondent had knowledge of the passing of the status quo order and consequently his action in demoli- shing amounted to contempt of Court. On the point that respondent No, 2 had knowledge of the passing of the status quo order, the learned counsel relied upon 3 documents. The first is a letter from one of the defendants in the suit filed by the petitioner, addressed to the Architect Control, K. M. C., which was received by the latter on 20-5-1975. That letter merely mentions the filing of the suit by the petitioner but does not mention that any status quo order had been issued by the Court. Moreover, this letter was addressed to the Architect Control and not to respondent No, 2, who is the Assistant Architect Control. No evidence has been led to show that this letter in fact was passed on to respondent No,
2. The second document relied upon by the learned counsel is a letter from the petitioner, again to the Architect Control, K. M. C., which is alleged to have been received by the latter on That letter specifically states that an application for interim injunction has been filed before the Court which had ordered status quo and which order was still subsisting. Since this letter bears the rubber stamp of the Architect Control, K. M. C., it can be presumed that the Architect Control did receive this letter. However, there is no evidence that this letter was passed on to respondent No,
2. This respondent in para 10 of his counter-affidavit has denied that he had any knowledge about the passing of the status quo order by the Court until 19-6-1975, when the Advocate of the petitioner intimated the Administrator, K. M.
C., about the litigation and the passing of the status quo order, but the demolition work had been completed some 6 days earlier and, therefore, it was not possible to undo what had already been done. The last document "relied upon by the learned counsel for the petitioner is para. 12 of the letter, dated 19-6-1975, addressed by the Advocate of the petitioner to the Administrator, K. M. C., stating that on 21-5-1975, the petitioner had not only informed respondent No, 2 of the status quo order but had also supplied him a copy of the same. There is, however, no tangible evidence or proof in support of this assertion. In any case, as already stated, respondent No, 2, has denied having received any intimation or copy of the status quo order till after the receipt of the letter to the Administrator dated 19-6-1975. There is, thus, no reliable evidence to show that prior to 19-6- 1975, that is long before the demolition work had been stopped, either respondent No, 2 was supplied with the copy of status quo order or was even aware of the same.
6. The other point which merits consideration in the case is whether respondent No, 2, who was not a party to the proceedings and who had acted in exercise of his statutory powers, was bound by the status quo order which was relatable only to respondent No, 1, his agents, assigns and successors. Mr. M. Rashiduddin submitted that even if a person is not a party to the proceedings in which a prohibitory or status quo order is issued, if he has knowledge of the same and commits breach of such an order, he will be liable in contempt. In support of his contention, the learned counsel relied upon the decision in Dr. A. N. M. Mahmood v. M. O. Ghani (1). In that case, the facts were that Dr. A. N. M. Mahmood had filed a suit against the Syndicate of the Dacca University making several grievances against it, including its failure to appoint him to a higher post, and had also submitted an application praying that the syndicate be restrained from giving effect to its resolution appointing another person to a higher grade than that held by Dr. Mahmood. On an application moved by Dr. Mahmood an ad interim injunction was issued by the learned Munsif before whom the suit was filed, restraining the University authorities from taking any steps affecting the status of the plaintiff till disposal of the suit. There was, however, a violation of this prohibitory order by the Syndicate which resolved that the appointment of Dr. K. T. Hussain as Reader in economics be confirmed. On proceedings being taken against the Vice-Chancellor and the Members of the Syndicate for contempt of Court, the contention raised was that they were not parties to the suit and hence no action for contempt could be taken against them. Repelling this argument, it was held that since the Syndicate and the Vice-Chancellor were expressly sued, the members of the Syndicate must be presumed to have actual knowledge of the prohibitory order and in diobeying the prohibitory order, they would be guilty of disobeying a lawful order issued by the Court.
7. The circumstances, in the instant case, however, are entirely different. As already indicated, the status quo order was issued to respondent No, 1,
(1) PLD 1967 Dacca 67 his agents, successors in interest and assigns. Despite the fact that the petitioner had knowledge about the proceedings being taken by respondent No, 2 to declare the building as dangerous and to demolish the same, as appears from the letter dated 5-5-1975, addressed by the Assistant Architect Control to the petitioner, which has been filed by the petitioner himself, the petitioner did not make the Karachi Municipal Corporation or respondent No, 2 as a party to the proceedings. The Karachi Municipal Corporation, in undertaking the demolition proceedings, was exercising statutory authority vested in it under the Sind Peoples Local Government Ordinance, 1972. Admittedly, in that capacity it was working as an agent or representative of of respondent No,
1. If the petitioner felt aggrieved by the proceedings being taken by respondent No, 2, he could have filed an appeal under section 88 of the aforesaid Ordinance to the appropriate authority, which admittedly he did not do. Since the action of the respondent No, 2 was in exercise of the powers lawfully conferred upon him under a statute and had no connection with the demolition work which was contemplated by respondent No, 1, I am unable to see how respondent No, 2 can be considered to have violated the status quo order issued by the civil Court, not against him but against respondent No, 1 and his agents.
8. In S. A. Malin v. Province of Sind (1), the contention was repelled that the power conferred upon the Municipal Committee by section 79 of the Municipal Administration Ordinance, 1960, for demolition of a building declared to be dangerous or ruinous cannot be exercised in relation to the tenants of the building because of the protection granted to the tenants by virtue of section 13 of the West Pakistan Urban Rent Restriction Ordinance, 1959.
9. I would also, in the end, refer to the decision of their Lordships of the Supreme Court in the case of M.
0. Ghani v. A. N. M. Mahmood (2). This case arose on appeal from the decision of Dacca High Court in the case reported in PLD 1967 Dacca 67, upon which case reliance has been placed by the learned counsel for the petitioner.
' The Supreme Court observed as follows :- "It will be noticed that sub-rules (3) and (4) of rule 2 of Order XXXIX, provide an adequate remedy against disobedience of an injunction order issued under sub-rules (1) and (2). With respect, we are unable to share the opinion of the learned Judges of the High Court that the alleged disobedience of the injunction order in the instant case was one, which could be dealt with properly, only under the contempt jurisdiction of the High Court. The machinery provided by rule 2 of Order XXXIX of the Civil Procedure Code was quite effective to deal with a situation of the kind that arose in the circumstances of this case. As was pointed out by this Court in Bahawal alias Bhaloo v. The State PLD 1962 SC 476, merely failure to obey any process of the Court, when other methods of enforcing the process are available, does not amount to contempt of Court to be punished summarily by the High Court, unless the person served with the process, has done something more to exhibit a disrespect for the process of the Court, as, for example used insolent or indecent expressions or violent or profane language, on being served with such a process or assaulted or ill-treated the process-server."
10. The upshot of the above discussion is that I have not been satisfied' either that respondent No, 2 had at the time of carrying out the demolition
(1) PLD 1976 Kar. 36 (2) PLD 1966 SC 802 work of the building in question knowledge of the status quo order passed by the learned Senior Civil Judge or that he could be otherwise held liable in contempt for disobedience of that order, since he was not an agent or representative of respondent No, 1 but. Was carrying out a responsibility entrusted to him by statute. In the circumstances, I am of the opinion that no contempt has been committed by respondent. No,
2. The application is accordingly dismissed.