Overview
- The court set aside a Sindh High Court order that upheld blocking a debtor’s CNIC during execution of a money decree dating back to 2016.
- Justice Muneeb Akhtar authored the three-page ruling for a two-judge bench that included Justice Irfan Saadat Khan.
- The judgment finds no basis in Section 51 of the Civil Procedure Code to block a CNIC for a simple money decree.
- The court called the CNIC a basic necessity of ordinary life and said taking it away amounts to denying the right to life, even questioning whether courts could next cut utilities to recover dues.
- A 2018 Peshawar High Court rule allowing CNIC blocking applies only in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and the Supreme Court reserved judgment on that rule’s validity.