ISLAMABAD: The Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday put on notice the director general of Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) in a petition seeking recovery of the son of an accused in the video leak case.

IHC Justice Aamer Farooq sought the reply from FIA in a week. The FIA had arrested Mian Tariq last month on the complaint filed by Mohammad Arshad Malik, former judge of the accountability court. The judge had accused Tariq of secretly making his video after allegedly intoxicating him.

A subsequent video of the judge, released by PML-N leader Maryam Nawaz, says that the judge convicted former prime minister Nawaz Sharif since he was blackmailed.

The judge, meanwhile, stated in an affidavit submitted to the IHC that PML-N supporters were blackmailing him for acquittal of Mr Sharif. He accused Mian Tariq of selling his video to the PML-N people.

FIA arrested Tariq on July 16 from Multan and produced him before the local court of Islamabad. The petition seeking recovery of Mohammad Faisal was filed by his sister Rida Tariq. The petitioner alleged that the police arrested her father from Multan on July 10 and kept him in illegal detention, tortured him and showed his arrest on papers on July 16.

She stated in the petition that her brother was going to Islamabad to see the detained father when the FIA official arrested him between Lahore and Islamabad and since then his whereabouts are not known.

The petitioner stated that the family is “uncertain about the whereabouts…whether he is alive or murdered by the said respondents [FIA officials] in some fake police encounter.”

The petition claimed that she “has come to know through reliable sources that the petitioner’s brother is in the custody/confinement of respondents and his life is at stake.”

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2019