September 26, 2007	Wednesday	Ramazan 13, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Sept 25: Another person, a woman, has gone missing. But this time the secret agencies are not the suspects. Parveen Akhtar’s case is yet another example of increasing incidents of violence against women.

Parveen is the victim of a decade-old family feud, said her brother, Tahir Mehmood, speaking at a conference at the Rawalpindi-Islamabad Press Club camp office here on Tuesday.

Tahir Mehmood, with his sister Sleem and their mother, expressed his strong suspicion that Parveen had been kidnapped with the consent of her husband, Khalid, and the connivance of his (Tahir’s) brother-in-law, Muhammad Younus who is married to Parveen’s sister, Sleem.

Mr Mehmood, a retired Junior Commissioned Officer of the army, stated that “Parveen went missing a day before her flight back to France on March 9, 2007. She had gone to see her mother- in-law in the hospital with her brother-in-law, Muhammad Younus but was not seen again. Before coming to Pakistan on a visit Parveen lived in France with her husband and four children. She had come to see her mother-in-law who was hospitalised.

According to Tanweer, Parveen’s son, Naeem Khalid, forced his father to go to Pakistan to inquire into the disappearance of his wife. He reached Pakistan on March 11 and registered an application at R.A. bazaar police station against an unknown person for abducting his wife.

He did not name his brother in the report. He took away his wife’s identity papers from her sister Sleem and returned to France without waiting for the recovery of his wife. But his children were annoyed with him for returning without their mother. Allegedly he tried to strangle one of them. The other children called the police who took away the two French born children in their custody.

The other two are pursuing the case of their mother and have asked the Interpol to find their mother.

Meanwhile Parveen’s sister, Sleem, has got an FIR registered against her husband, Younus, who has divorced her. Tahir in his statement to the journalists blamed the police for not cooperating with the complainants.

Shahnaz Bukhari of the Progressive Women’s Association (PWA) has protested against the disappearance of the 50-year-old Parveen and demanded of the government to investigate acts of violence against women and punish the culprits duly.

She cited the opinion of a judge in the case who opined that the police investigation was ‘poor’.

Ms Bukhari urged senior police officers and the judiciary to expedite the inquiry into the woman’s disappearance and also appealed to the French embassy to use its influence in Parveen’s recovery.