ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Tuesday observed that a general attorney could not sell or transfer property to any of their close relatives without clear consent and permission of the original owner.
A two-member bench, headed by Justice Bilal Hassan and comprising Justice Shakeel Ahmad, issued a judgment in a case related to the transfer of property.
The court declared the suspicious transfer of property as illegal and dismissed the appeal. The court had reserved the judgment on April 6. Petitioner Javed Iqbal and others had filed an appeal against the judgment passed by the Lahore High Court, Bahawalpur Bench, on October 6, 2025.
“The impugned transition is clearly hit by the settled principles governing fiduciary obligations of an attorney and cannot be sustained,” says the five-page judgment authored by Justice Shahid Bilal Hassan.
The court held that for the sale and transfer of property, if a general attorney (a person holding power of attorney) intends to transfer property, they must first obtain written permission from the original owner. “Before transferring the property, the attorney is also required to fully inform the original owner about all details of the transaction,” says the judgment The court clarified that the payment made merely through a cheque could not be considered final or conclusive proof of a property sale.
It is worth mentioning that the case pertained to a deceased woman named Farhat Iqbal, who had inherited land from her father in Chishtian. She had appointed her servant, Javed Iqbal, as her general attorney to manage the land. However, without obtaining her permission, he transferred the land to his sons.
The court observed that since the woman had not granted permission to her attorney to transfer the land to his sons, the transfer carried out by him was illegal. The court dismissed Javed Iqbal’s appeal and declared the entire process null and void.
