ISLAMABAD, Sept 2: The Supreme Court was informed on Monday that Zaheer Muzzaffar Kiani, a man missing since Feb 26, 2011, from Rawalpindi does not meet the criteria of enforced disappearance as the investigation suggested that he might have left his home on his own.

Additional Attorney General Tariq Khokhar told a three-judge Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chauhdhry, that investigation done so far into the case revealed that Muzzaffar neither took any formal religious education nor had any Jihadi leanings. His association with any Jihadi outfit has also not been established, the court was informed.

The Supreme Court had taken up the case of Zaheer Muzzaffar on an application filed by his father Muzzaffar Khan, who had alleged that his 18-year-old son Zaheer Muzzaffar had disappeared from Rawalpindi where he was working as a servant at the Askari Villas in Chaklala Scheme III.

His father, who originally belongs to Chaghar Abbas, a village in Azad Kashmir’s Poonch district and near the Line of Control, had alleged that he had received a phone call from his son on Feb 26, 2011, at 9am and since then whereabouts of his son were not known.

The owner of the home where Zaheer had worked also endorsed that his servant had been missing since that date. The father of the missing man lodged an FIR at Rawalpindi’s Airport police station after two months on April 27, 2011. During previous proceedings, the father of the disappeared man had informed the court that he received three phone calls on Dec 7,8 and 12 in 2011 and the caller asked him about whereabouts of his son.

The AAG told the court that when the data analysis of the father’s telephone record was done, it was revealed that the call was made from the office of the Assistant Director (AG) of Intelligence Bureau (IB) near the Rawalpindi railway station, which the IB official admitted that the calls were made after the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIED) ordered a joint investigation team (JIT) on Nov 26, 2011, to help investigate the matter.

The JIT then asked the IB to look into the missing people’s case and in response to that, three telephone calls had been made to the father of the disappeared man from the IB assistant director’s office.

The AAG further informed the court that mobile phone data of Zaheer Muzzaffar had established that the individual used his mobile phones only to contact his relatives. Investigations into the matter, the AAG explained, could not establish the role of intelligence agencies in the disappearance of Zaheer Muzzaffar. During meetings of the JIT, both Inter Services Intelligence and the Military Intelligence had also denied their involvement in having any knowledge about the case.

Probably, Zaheer Muzzaffar might have crossed the border on his own, the court was told. The court asked the AAG to continue efforts to recover the missing person.