LAHORE: The Lahore High Court (LHC) issued notices to Punjab Forensic Science Agency (PFSA) on Wednesday seeking reply within five days over a contempt petition filed by Affan Asad Taj, the owner of one of the oldest cinemas of Lahore – Taj Cinema, Pakistan Today has learnt.
According to the details, Justice Mazahar Ali Akbar Naqvi of LHC passed an order on June 6, 2017 urging the public information officer of PFSA to provide the forensic report of the fire that erupted at CineStar-Taj Cinema on June 7, 2016, in which the whole structure of the cinema was gutted down. In his June 6, 2017 order, LHC said that the public information officer of PFSA must provide the forensic report to the petitioner under the ‘Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013’ within ten days.
Talking to Pakistan Today, petitioner Affan Taj said that he filed an application in the office of public information officer of PFSA (on 03.05.2017) seeking the complete forensic report of the fire incident that took place at Taj Cinema over a year ago under the Punjab Transparency and Right to Information Act 2013. “I didn’t get any reply from the agency after the stipulated time of 14 days. Then I approached the LHC to get relief and the court ruled in my favour,” Taj said. He further added that he wrote an application to the director general of PFSA (on 9.06.2017), three days after the order of LHC demanding the forensic record once again, but the agency did not comply the court order even after the passage of more than three months that prompted him to file the contempt petition.
It is worth mentioning here that the structure of Taj Cinema was completely gutted down in the fire incident that took place in suspicious circumstances over a year ago, injuring two people and destroying valuables worth of millions. The petitioner alleges that the eruption of fire was a deliberate act to get the insurance claim of 50 million and it was done on the behest of CineStar, to whom the owner of Taj Cinema gave its property on a lease for a period of nine years in June 2013.
