PESHAWAR, June 17: A two-member bench of the Peshawar High Court on Thursday held in camera proceedings in two identical habeas corpus petitions challenging the detention of two young men allegedly arrested by the Pakistan Army more than three months ago.

The bench, comprising Justice Tariq Pervez and Justice Shahjehan Khan Yousafzai, recorded the statements two of the relatives of the detainees, who were also picked up with them but were released a few days ago.

The court directed the ministry of defence to inquire from other intelligence agencies and the Inter-Services Intelligence and the Military Intelligence within a fortnight regarding the whereabouts of the two detainees.

During the last hearing, a section officer of the ministry, Maj (retd) Mohammad Anwer Rafi, had informed the court that neither ISI nor the MI had any information regarding the two detainees.

On Thursday, Mr Rafi sought further time for inquiring from other intelligence agencies if they had any information about the arrest of the detainees. The court allowed him a fortnight for collecting that information. The two habeas corpus petitions had been filed by an agriculture scientist Dr Abdur Rehman and one of his relatives Mohammad Aslam Khan.

Dr Rehman, a former managing director of a multinational agro-chemical company, claimed that his son, Sohail Rehman, who had spent more than three years in Canada and held a "permanent resident card," was picked by some plainclothesmen accompanied by men in army uniform from his residence in Dera Ismail Khan between the night of March 11 and 12noon at about 3am.

Advocate Muhammad Aslam has stated that his three nephews Kashif Jamal, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Farooq, who are also the nephews of Dr Rehman, were picked up from their Dera Ismail Khan residence on the same night and since then, their whereabouts were not known. Two of them, Mohammad Asif and Kashif Jamal, were released a few days ago.

On June 10 the court had ordered that both Kashif Jamal and Mohammad Asif should appear before the court and inform the bench as to who had picked them up and where they had been kept.

The petitioners' lawyer, Lateef Afridi, later told journalists that keeping in view the sensitivity of the case, the bench had been holding proceedings in chamber. The petitioners have claimed that they had seen more than 200 armymen in uniform who raided their residences and picked the detainees.

The respondents in these petition are the government of Pakistan through the secretary of the ministry of defence, the secretary of the ministry of interior, the NWFP government through the home secretary and police officials.