The Madina Mosque story

KARACHI: Haji Abdul Razzaq was used to the rush and noise caused by shoppers near his house in Block 2 of Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society (PECHS) alongside Tariq Road. Knowing well that a park and a club existed there before the space was encroached upon, he, in early 2021, decided to file an application for removal of shops in the Supreme Court (SC)’s Karachi registry, where he had come to know that a bench often hears cases against encroachment on amenity plots.

Thus, he filed a civil miscellaneous application (CMA) to become intervener in a petition filed by former Karachi mayor, the late Niamatullah Khan in 2010 for removing encroachments from parks and public spaces.

Such encroachments that became a common practice after 2008 are known by Karachi’s residents as ‘china cutting.’

From August, his CMA started appearing on the cause list of SC’s Karachi registry, but could not be picked for hearing before a bench headed by Chief Justice of Pakistan Gulzar Ahmed before October.

In October his application was briefly heard and adjourned because of non-availability of the original layout plan of PECHS. The federal ministry of housing and works which had originally planned PECHS in the 1950s, filed the original layout plan in another matter in November last year.

On December 28, an SC bench headed by the CJ while hearing Abdul Razzaq’s CMA noted from the PECHS layout map that besides the space indicated in the application, a park of around 1,200 square yards has shown to have existed.

The CJ inquired from the applicant as well as counsel for the PECHS whether the park still existed. The applicant, Abdul Razzaq and Amber Alibhai of NGO Sheri, pointed out that a mosque by the name of Madina Mosque had been constructed on the park land.

The bench then ordered the Karachi commissioner and advocate general (AG) Sindh who were present in the court to contact the mosque committee, Auqaf secretary and administrator District Municipal Corporation (DMC) East and ask them to appear before the court.

Two hours later, an officer of Auqaf department and administrator DMC appeared before the court while no one appeared for the mosque committee. The Auqaf officer apprised the bench that the mosque did not come under the purview of his department as it had not been registered with it. The administrator DMC stated that his office was concerned with maintenance of the park while matters pertaining to its land were related to the PECHS.

The bench adjourned the matter for the day directing the Karachi commissioner to ensure the presence of some representative of the mosque committee.

The next day a member of the mosque committee appeared before the bench. The bench asked him if he knew that the mosque had been constructed by encroaching upon the land of a park and it is against the country’s law.

The committee member stated that he did not know much about the status of the land on which the mosque had been built.

The bench held that Madina Mosque had been built on encroached land and is liable to be demolished. Surprisingly, the mosque committee’s members did not disagree with the observation of the bench nor requested time to ascertain the factual situation after which the bench dictated the order for demolition of shops built on public space as well as the Madina Mosque constructed on the plot meant for the park.

Mosque history

Maulana Rashid Soomro, general secretary of JUI-F Sindh and other religious leaders addressing public gathering outside Madina Mosque, after offering Friday prayers on January 7, reportedly made fiery speeches against the order of the SC claiming that the mosque had been built on the land of Dilkasha Park 40 years ago.

Some leaders even stated that it was built in 1980. However, the documents handed over to the district administration Karachi East and DMC East by Madina Mosque Trust secretary with notice warning against demolition shows that Madina Mosque Trust president had in November 1994 made request to the PECHS for grant of no-objection certificate (NOC) for construction of the mosque.

The then honorary secretary of PECHS retired captain Waris-un-Nabi on Dec 6, 1994 issued the NOC attaching conditions that the mosque would only be used for offering prayers and holding religious functions and would not be used for commercial or residential purposes.

The documents further showed that Karachi Building Control Authority (KBCA as SBCA was then known) had approved the building plan for the mosque to be constructed on 1,072.83 square yards in 1996.

Public opinion

Zahid Sheikh, 70, lives in a bungalow a few streets away from Madina Mosque. He says that as far as he remembers, Dilkasha Park existed there till the mid-1990s.

However, the iron grills that once marked the boundary wall of the park were first removed and some vendors placed fast food and juice stalls there. But in the night it used to become an abode for drug addicts.

Initially, some people reportedly were offering prayers three times a day inside the park after driving addicts and vendors out. With the passage of time a proper mosque was built. The present structure is a four-storey mosque, as it stands today.

Most of the shopkeepers told Bol News they want the mosque to be maintained. They are of the view that they have the ease of saying congregational prayers next to their shops.

They say they do not know the law much but they do know that both the park and mosque are for the people.

“If mosque is providing us the facility of saying prayers then why should it be demolished just to build a park in the area which otherwise is now totally commercial,” argued a shopkeeper.

If the SC or the government want the land to be purchased, we are ready to pay its price, removing the court’s concern that the mosque could not be maintained on encroached land, says another shopkeeper.