ISLAMABAD: During question hour in the Senate on Friday, the government disclosed that five unidentified persons had been arrested in Sindh for allegedly financing terrorism, but failed to explain when they had been taken into custody or if their cases were under investigation or would be tried in court.

This was revealed in a written reply to a question regarding the number of people arrested under the National Action Plan on charges of financing terrorism.

According to Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar, five people had been arrested in Sindh, four in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and 28 in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) on these charges.

No arrests have been made on this account in Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Islamabad and Balochistan.

It was also revealed that while cases of those arrested in GB and KP were being heard in the Anti-Terrorism Courts, there was no mention of the status of the cases from Sindh.

In reply to a supplementary question asked by Senator Farhatullah Babar, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Sheikh Aftab Ahmed said that he was not aware of the current status of the cases in Sindh.

There was no mention of Dr Asim Hussain or if he was one of the five persons arrested on the charge of financing terrorism. The minister later agreed to check with the relevant ministry and reply to the supplementary question in the next session.

Talking about the admissibility of the adjournment motion to discuss the issues of the Frontier Constabulary (FC), Senator Babar said the FC operated on borders between settled areas in KP and tribal areas.

As many as 140 platoons of the FC were supporting the army in Fata, frontier regions and KP in the fight against militancy. It had rendered huge sacrifices in the war against militancy and nearly 350 of its jawans and officers had been martyred.

However, he said “in a meeting of the Senate Committee on Interior the other day it transpired that the FC was in terrible shape and it had adversely impacted on the morale of the troops”.

“The FC men are paid even less than the police personnel. As against over 25,000 men in the force it had charpoys for only 8,000 troops, according to facts placed before the Senate committee,” he said.

“They have no accommodation in Islamabad and are living in tents and mud huts built by them. It is crucial that the force increased the morale of its jawans and officers for the success of the ongoing fight against terrorism.”

The chairman, however, asked the mover to press into service some other parliamentary instrument to agitate the matter instead of an adjournment motion which he said was not admissible under the rules.

Published in Dawn, January 16th, 2016