KARACHI, July 13: The Sindh High Court issued notices to the federal and provincial attorneys for July 19 in a petition alleging illegal confinement of Sindh Nationalist Forum chairman and Jeay Sindh Tehrik activist Asif Baladi.
Jibran Baladi submitted through Advocates Syed Ghulam Shah and Ghulam Mustafa Lakho that his father, Allah Ditto alias ASif Baladi, was picked up by Inter-Services Intelligence personnel from his Gulistan-i-Jauhar residence on June 26. While in custody, he contacted his sister in Hyderabad asking her to send his passport and national identity card through one Sarwar, who would be visiting his Gulistan-i-Jauhar residence. The petitioner said Sarwar came to his residence with three or four people in a vehicle numbered AKD-583 on July 2. He introduced himself as a servant of Brig Saleem of the ISI but the petitioner did not deliver him that passport and the NIC.
The petitioner said nothing was known about his father’s whereabouts since June 26 and no contact had been made by him after his phone call. He feared for the safety of the detainee and requested the court to order his recovery and production. The Gulistan-i-Jauhar police station had been informed of the disappearance but no case had been registered.
A division bench comprising Justices Anwar Zaheer Jamali and Mohammad Afzal Soomro asked the deputy attorney-general and the advocate-general to seek instructions from the authorities concerned to ascertain the whereabouts of the alleged detainee and inform the court by July 19, when the petition would again come up for hearing.
GIRL’S RECOVERY: The bench directed the district police officer of Shikarpur to depute an honest and responsible police officer to recover a 10-year-old girl alleged to have been detained by her employer.
Ms Hameeda stated in her petition that her daughter, Shabbiran, worked as a maidservant in the house of Sardar Wahid Bux of Kandhkot. The employer held her in unlawful custody when she failed to repay a loan taken by her.
Respondent Wahid Bux denied the allegation and said that he had handed over the girl to the petitioner’s brothers or Shabbiran’s maternal uncles. The DPO appeared in response to a court notice and submitted that efforts had been made to recover the girl but the police had failed to find her.
The bench issued a recovery order to the DPO and asked him to depute an honest and responsible police officer to find out the girl’s whereabouts and recover her. August 1 was fixed as the next date of hearing of the petition.
