A landlord has been ordered to immediately allow a family of eight back into a rental property from which he allegedly evicted them while wielding a hammer and accompanied by eight others.<\/p>\n
Granting the orders on Monday, Judge Brian Cregan said the circumstances of the case, as alleged by tenant Muhammad Amjad, were \u201cappalling\u201d. <\/p>\n
The defendants have not yet had a chance to respond to the claims.<\/p>\n
The court was told that Amjad, his wife and six children were unlawfully evicted from their rental home in Ongar Village, west Dublin, last Saturday. It followed sustained threats, intimidation and interference, and ended with forcible entry by landlord Imtiaz Khan, who is a practising Dublin solicitor and principal of IMK Law. <\/p>\n
Barrister David O\u2019Brien, instructed by RNL solicitor Reza Nezam, said his client\u2019s family were put out in an \u201cincredibly egregious way\u201d, with Amjad\u2019s wife woken from a nap and told to leave. <\/p>\n
All of this occurred in \u201ccomplete circumvention\u201d of Amjad\u2019s claim before the Residential Tenancies Board (RTB), said O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n
His client and family have since been living together in the sittingroom of a relative\u2019s \u201ctiny\u201d apartment. O\u2019Brien said the children could not attend school on Monday as it was too far away.<\/p>\n
In a sworn written statement, Amjad claimed that Khan, while carrying a hammer, shouldered him, issued \u201cexplicit threats to strike me if I did not vacate within three minutes\u201d and warned he would throw his family\u2019s possessions into a skip. <\/p>\n
Amjad said his children were present and \u201cvisibly traumatised\u201d by the incident. He alleged Khan and his company, IMK Property Investment Limited, later changed the locks to obstruct access.<\/p>\n
He said he had been issued with a purported notice of termination, but was advised by tenant support charity Threshold that it was invalid and the landlord had failed to comply with obligations.<\/p>\n
Amjad said he has lived in the Ongar Village property since 2013, initially under a different landlord, with Khan and IMK Property purportedly taking over the lease from May 2022. <\/p>\n
He said he abided by the new landlord\u2019s preferred rent payment methods, yet the defendants failed to produce proof of title or landlord interest and failed to regularise registration of the lease with the RTB.<\/p>\n
The judge said he would make the urgent orders sought, given the \u201cextraordinary\u201d allegations made in the case.<\/p>\n
His orders, made while only the plaintiff was represented in court, temporarily restrain Khan and IMK Property from interfering with Amjad\u2019s quiet enjoyment of the premises or from attempting to exclude them from the premises. The defendants are also prohibited from harassing or intimidating Amjad or damaging any of his personal property.<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s orders require Khan and his company to restore possession of the premises to Amjad, including delivering up any keys and removing any obstructions to access.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to make it crystal clear that this injunction is to take effect immediately,\u201d said the judge, adding that he expected to hear on Tuesday that the family were \u201cback in their property\u201d. <\/p>\n
Noting Khan is a solicitor, the judge said he would \u201cpresumably comply with an order of the court\u201d. <\/p>\n
He directed Amjad\u2019s lawyers to serve the defendants with the orders and notify them of the case\u2019s return on Tuesday, when they will have their first opportunity to respond to the allegations or to seek to remove the orders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A landlord has been ordered to immediately allow a family of eight back into a rental property from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[151135,10863,17347,6285,61,60,43,10864],"class_list":["post-326385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-1st-images","tag-bestof","tag-essential","tag-horizontal","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-topix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}