ISLAMABAD, Aug 23: The people of the country may soon be able to find out how many intelligence agencies are operating in Pakistan, what are their specific role and which of them have been transgressing their mandate and authority.

This is likely to be possible following the directive of the Senate functional committee on human rights to the government to inform it about the full particulars of the secret and investigative agencies presently operating in the country.

Sources told Dawn that the committee members in a meeting on Thursday took serious notice of the involvement of the agencies in the cases of missing persons being heard by the Supreme Court. The meeting was presided over by Senator S. M. Zafar.

The functioning of the country’s secret and investigative agencies, which had been discussed at various forums for the past many months during the hearing of missing persons’ case in the Supreme Court, further came to limelight during the hearing of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry’s petition challenging the presidential reference.

It may be recalled that former People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) senator Farhatullah Babar had submitted a question to the Senate Secretariat some two years back asking the government to tell the upper house about the law under which the intelligence agencies were operating. However, Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro disallowed the question and killed it in the chamber after declaring it a matter of sensitive nature.

The sources said the committee members, most of them from the opposition parties, expressed concern over the fact that the Supreme Court had to actively interfere in the case of each and every missing person and whenever the court asserted its authority, the government produced the missing persons after getting them released from the custody of various agencies.

The opposition members, the sources said, wanted to know as to how many agencies were operating in the country and under what law. The members also expressed their desire to know about the mandate of each and every agency and the authority under which they were functioning and answerable to.

According to an official handout issued by the Senate Secretariat after the meeting, the ministry of interior presented a report to the committee on the missing persons apprising it of those released and recovered during the proceedings of the Supreme Court. As the committee found that the jurisdiction of the ministry of interior was limited, it asked the defence ministry and the secretary cabinet division to inform it of the law under which various government agencies operated.

The committee also directed the ministry of law to come up with a comprehensive report on the powers of the agencies to deal with different crimes and situations. The committee expressed its concern over the present state of affairs and called for changing it.

It observed that it was the responsibility of the provincial police, home department and the inspector-general of the police concerned to recover a missing person. It called for a close liaison between the interior ministry and provincial governments, saying they must cooperate with one another to know the whereabouts of the missing persons.

The meeting was attended by opposition leader in the Senate Raza Rabbani, Mohammad Abbas Komaili, Sardar Latif Khosa, Dr Mohammad Said and Prof Khursheed Ahmed.