Islamabad/Lahore, Mar. 30 : Pakistan Supreme Court staff on Saturday raided the house of deposed apex court Justice Khalilur Rahman Ramday and took away some important files and documents.

Sources told the Dawn that the staff also collected household articles and dumped them in a room.

Late in the night, Prime Minister Gilani ordered the restoration of the house to justice Ramday and asked his home affairs adviser to conduct an investigation.

Athar Minallah, a senior lawyer, told the paper that the raid was conducted on the orders of Chief Justice Abdul Hamid Dogar.

Two officials of the Supreme Court — a deputy registrar and an additional registrar who were accompanied by a PWD caretaker — arrived at the Justice Ramday’s house in the Judicial Colony between 6:30 p. m. and 7:00 p. m., he said, adding that they asked the two house servants to let them enter the house.

When they refused to open the gates, they broke the locks and entered the house, he said.

Minallah said that they combed the house and collected some papers.

He said that Rehman Malik, adviser to prime minister on interior and narcotics, had told him on phone that an inquiry had been ordered and the investigation would be completed within 24 hours.

In Lahore, Justice Ramday said he had kept the record and the verdict of an important case at his Islamabad residence.

The President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, Aitzaz Ahsan, said that the material that Justice Ramday was talking about “might be his detailed judgment in the case concerning the reinstatement of the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry”.

Justice Ramday described the ransacking of his home in Islamabad as “an inappropriate and uncivilised action, aimed at sabotaging the process of the restoration of judges started by the prime minister’s order to release them.”

Information Secretary of the PPP, Sherry Rehman, said late on Saturday neither was the prime minister’s house aware of the incident nor the government had anything to do with it.

Malik has been asked to submit a report to the prime minister by Sunday. (ANI)