The Lahore High Court Monday overruled an objection on a petition seeking directions to the federal government to bring Koh-i-Noor diamond back from the possession of British Queen Elizabeth-II and ordered to fix it for preliminary hearing before any bench.
Earlier, the LHC registrar office has put an objection to the maintainability of the petition observing that the court had no jurisdiction to hear a case against the British Queen. Barrister Syed Javed Iqbal Jaffree had moved the petition which came up for hearing as an objection case.
Replying to the objection, in his fresh petition, the petitioner-lawyer said that the LHC registrar office had no authority to object to any constitutional petition. “It is tantamount to interfering in the powers and jurisdiction of the court,” he stated.
He stated that making British Queen a necessary party in every criminal case filed before any British court was mandatory and a petition against the Queen could also be filed before the LHC.
The court accepted the request by over ruling the objection.
The petitioner alleged that the British had snatched the diamond from Daleep Singh, the grandson of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and took it to the United Kingdom. He said that the diamond became part of the crown of Queen Elizabeth-II at the time of her crowing in 1953.
