KARACHI: Court seeks whereabouts of missing persons
By Shujaat Ali Khan
KARACHI, June 29: The Sindh High Court gave the federal and provincial government agencies a last opportunity to inform it of the whereabouts of 10 people missing for several months and alleged to be in their custody on July 11.
Ten petitions agitating the alleged arrest and detention of Abdur Rauf Sasoli, deputy secretary-general of the Jamhoori Watan Party, Salim Baloch, JWP vice-president, Saeed Brohi, Karachi JWP chief, 20-year-old Affan Laghari, Liaquat Hussain Naiyer of Pasban-i-Aza and another Shia leader, Munir Mengal of Dubai-based TV channel ‘Baloch Voice’, (Abdul) Rehman Dakait and other came up before a division bench, comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Mohammad Athar Saeed.
The petitioners were represented by Advocates Noor Naz Agha, Haider Imam Rizvi and other lawyers while Deputy Attorney-General Akhtar Ali Mahmood and standing counsel Mahmood A. Rizvi appeared for the federal government and Additional Advocate-general Rafiq Rajori for the provincial government.
Defence ministry joint secretary Rashid Mazari, Colonels Khalid Iqbal Soho and Inamur Rehman of the Pakistan Army’s judge advocate-general branch, deputy director Seikh Pervaiz Iqbal of the Intelligence Bureau, DIG (Operations) Mushtaq Shah and section officer (judicial) Abrar Ahmad Shaikh of the Sindh home department appeared in response to court summons to represent their ministries, departments and agencies.
The notice to the Federal Investigation Agency was discharged when the bench was told that Munir Mengal was cleared by it on his arrival from Dubai on April 5 and it had nothing to do with arrest or detention.
The bench observed that the alleged detainees were missing for months and years and yet no agency has come forward to ascertain or disclose their whereabouts.
Their relatives and friends were anxious about their safety. If they have committed an office, howsoever heinous or grave, they should be produced before a court.
If there was no allegation or the allegation against them has been found baseless, they should be let off. In any case, there was no justification for keeping them in custody indefinitely and for not producing them in a court of law.
About the JWP office-bearers, the bench was told that Mr Sasoli was picked up on Feb 3 from Safari Park and Saeed Brohi, who was an eye-witness to the incident, and Salim Baloch, who was pursuing the petition for his recovery and production, were detained in March.
Affan Laghari was taken into custody last year. Rahman Dakait, a Lyari underworld don, was arrested from Quetta and taken to Islamabad. He was shown an absconder in an FIR registered on June 19. The petitioner feared that he might be killed in an encounter.
In respect of the detention of Shia leaders, the bench was informed that according to a newspaper report, 50 people had been arrested in connection with the Nishtar Park blast of April 11.
Some of them have been released but the remaining detainees have neither been released nor produced before a court. The bench was requested to order compliance with an earlier direction for production of a list of all detainees.
The bench asked the home department to submit a list on July 11, when the matter would again come up for hearing along with other petitions of identical nature.
