KARACHI, Dec 29: Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas directed the Punjab inspector-general of prisons and the superintendent of Central Jail, Lahore, on Friday to show cause why action should not be taken against them for keeping Abdul Hanan (treated as Kishan Lal of India) behind bars for three years without any authority of law.
Abdul Hanan, son of Muhammad Anwarullah, is at present lodged in the Central Prison, Karachi. He recounted his tale of imprisonment since Aug 1997 in a letter addressed to the court, acting on which Justice Bhagwandas ordered his production at the SC’s Karachi registry.
Mr Hanan, who lives in Karachi’s Gulshan-i-Iqbal, lost his national identity card in June 1995. According to him, when he went to the Gulshan police station to report the loss of the card, pital in or about August 1997 and was arrested as ‘Kishan Lal, son of Mohan Lal’, by local police at Data Darbar, Lahore. According to him, he was illegally sent up before a magistrate, who convicted him and sentenced him to a year’s rigorous imprisonment.
On Dec 12, 1998, he was produced before the federal review board for preventive detention cases in Lahore and the board authorized his detention for one month for holding an inquiry into his nationality. He was sent back to the Central Jail, Lahore, but was transferred to the Central Prison, Karachi, in April 1999 for three days, during which certain Indian consular officials met him but refused to acknowledge him as an Indian national. He was shifted back to the Lahore jail.
The federal review board, the petitioner claimed, accepted his identity as Abdul Hanan, son of Muhammad Anwarullah, on Dec 22, 2001, and ordered his production again on January 5, 2002. But Hanan was shifted to the Karachi jail on January 3, 2002, and never produced before the board thereafter. On November 27, 2005, he was again taken to the Lahore jail. In April-May he was interviewed by Indian high commission officials, who again declined to acknowledge his nationality and said he would not be accepted as an Indian citizen if deported. Neither released from custody nor deported to India, Hanan decided to approach the Supreme Court.
In response to a court order, a report was submitted Raja Abdul Qayyum, a law officer working in the Punjab IG (Prisons) office, on behalf of the IGP on Friday. The ACJ termed the report ‘sketchy and incomplete’. It failed to account for the petitioner’s detention from Jan 2, 2002, to Dec 1, 2005. There, the ACJ observed, was no order of detention by any competent authority and the jail authorities, prima facie, acted in an illegal manner.
Justice Bhagwandas directed that an inquiry be made from the Gulshan-i-Iqbal police station whether Hanan reported loss of his NIC in 1995 as alleged by him.
KARACHI, Dec 29: Acting Chief Justice Rana Bhagwandas directed the Punjab inspector-general of prisons and the superintendent of Central Jail, Lahore, on Friday to show cause why action should not be taken against them for keeping Abdul Hanan (treated as Kishan Lal of India) behind bars for three years without any authority of law.
