KARACHI: Police given two weeks to recover Bheel family
By Shujaat Ali Khan
KARACHI, Nov 22: Police have been trying in vain to recover a 10-member Bheel family since 1996, Advocate-General Anwar Mansoor Khan told a Supreme Court bench here on Tuesday.
The bench, which consisted of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and Justice Javed Buttar, was hearing a criminal miscellaneous application in its original human rights jurisdiction. The application is based on a complaint made by a Swedish human rights activist. The complaint was converted into an application in exercise of suo motu powers.
Police inspector-general Asad Jehangir, who appeared in person, sought two weeks more to ascertain the whereabouts of Munno Bheel and his nine-member family and recover them from their captors. The request was allowed and the hearing was adjourned to Dec 21 for further proceedings.
Complainant Torborg Isaksson wrote to the CJ from Sweden that a bonded hari (farm worker), Munno Bheel, and his family had been working on the lands of Abdur Rahman Marri at Jhole, Sangarh district, in the early 1990s. They were liberated by a special task force of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) together with 50 other bonded labourers in 1996. Only two years later, however, they were kidnapped by armed men and brought back to the same landlord.
The HRCP has since made every possible effort and approached all possible forums of redress for the recovery of the detained family without any success. The complainant pointed out that bonded labour was outlawed in Pakistan in 1992. The Bonded Labour Prohibition Act banned all forms of forced labour and use of credit or advance payment as a means of keeping the haris in bondage.
JAIL OFFICIAL: Acting on a complaint against deputy superintendent Amanullah Khan Niazi of the Central Prison, Karachi, the SC bench directed him to submit his comments within two weeks and adjourned further proceedings to Dec 21. Both the complaints would be heard at the court’s Karachi registry.
Complainant Syed Obaid Mujtaba said the SC had taken action in respect of Punjab jail officials and a similar action was called for against Mr Niazi, who had already served as deputy superintendent at the Karachi jail for 13 years. He had provided mobile phones to National Accountability Bureau accused and militants belonging to extremist organizations. A high-level committee took note of the cases registered on numerous complaints made against the official but no action could be taken against him.
PHONE TOWERS: The bench issued the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited a notice in a petition for leave to appeal against a Sindh High Court judgment.
Petitioners Dr Nazir Chaudhry, a former principal of the Dow Medical College, and an ICI director, submitted through Advocate Naimur Rehman that the PTCL had installed mobile towers at a telephone exchange in Phase II of the Defence Housing Authority.
The towers, the petitioners said, would emit electro-magnetic radiation injurious to human life. They moved the SHC against the PTCL but their petition was dismissed despite the Supreme Court judgment in Shehla Zia’s case that precautionary measured should be taken before the installation of any equipment which could pose a threat to environment.
PLOTS FOR LAWYERS: The bench dismissed a belated provincial government appeal against a 2003 SHC decision upholding allotment of 100 acres of land to the Sindh High Court Bar Association for a lawyers’ housing colony at Deh Taiser, Tapo Songal, Karachi, at the rate of Rs30,000 per acre in 1993.
The association was developing the colony known as Gulshan-i-Sharaf Faridi when the provincial government promulgated the Sindh Urban State Land (Cancellation of Allotments, Conversions and Exchanges) Amendment Ordinance in 2001.
The ordinance sought to annul all allotments made at below the market value unless the allottees paid the difference between the market and allotment prices. The SHCBA filed a petition saying that the land allotted to it was not hit by the new ordinance and the SHC allowed the plea.
