The lingering legal battle involving one of the country’s leading business conglomerates, Jahanagir Siddiqui Group, took an ugly turn on Friday when majority and minority shareholders turned the group’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) into a battlefield that eventuated into the lodging of a counter-FIR against Jahanagir Siddiqui and his son Ali Siddiqui.
Another FIR lodged in the Saddar Police Station was by the JS Group against Shunaid Qureshi, CEO of Al-Abbas Sugar Mills, and his associates including Haji Abdul Ghani, the chairman of demutualisation committee of the Karachi Stocks Exchange and a signatory of the Al-Abbas Sugar Mills’ board.
Witnesses claimed to have seen incidents of hooliganism at Friday’s AGM held here at the RegentPlaza hotel which had one of its meeting hall’s doors broken.
When contacted, the spokesmen of the two disputing sides pointed fingers at each other for hooliganism.
The brawl started when Shunaid, the nephew of Jahangir Siddiqui, and Haji Ghani along with over a dozen affiliates arrived to attend the JSCL AGM in the capacity of minority shareholders. It is important to mention here that the AGM was scheduled to approve the company’s financial accounts including the grant of a bonus of over Rs 430 million to a non-executive director, Ali Siddiqui, for his advisory services in the $37 million PICT sell-off in March 2012.
According to the witnesses, as Qureshi and company reached the meeting spot, they were denied entry into the hall with the organisers allegedly saying it wasn’t the time for the meeting yet. This infuriated the minority shareholders, who then engaged in a verbal clash with the JSCL’s organisers. The clash, the witnesses claimed, intensified to the extent that the door of the hotel’s hall was broken.
“There was a pandemonium. We were badly roughed up. They were not allowing us entry into the meeting hall,” claimed Ghani while talking to Pakistan Today.
“They entered the hall, broke the door and manhandled us,” the counter-allegation came from Imran Shaikh, a spokesman of the JS Group. Imran said entry could, logically, not be allowed to those who were not the company’s shareholders.
According to the witnesses, some of the members from the two groups were seen bleeding and having their clothes torn into pieces.
Peace was only restored when the Saddar police, after receiving an anonymous call, arrived at the scene and surprisingly, arrested around 15 of the minority shareholders, including Qureshi and Ghani.
The JSCL side was later said to have lodged an FIR against the remaining seven of Qureshi’s group as others were subsequently set free.
As soon as he was freed by the Saddar police, Ghani visited the SSP Clifton who said the police’s one-sided action was inappropriate. The sources privy to the matter said the SSP not only ordered his deputy to arrange the release of the seven others but also assured Ghani of a just resolution of the issue.
Ghani confirmed to Pakistan Today that all of his affiliates had been released by the police.
“We have lodged an FIR against them and have nominated therein Jahangir Siddiqui, Ali Siddiqui, Imran Shaikh and their other subordinates,” he said.
Imran, however, denied all the charges leveled against his side asking how could Siddiquis be nominated in the FIR when they were not even present there.
While Ghani resolved to face his rivals in the court, Imran shrugged off and said the Ghani and his friends were free to do anything.