PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday directed the provincial home department to produce the report of the autopsy of a man, who recently died at the Kohat internment centre under mysterious circumstances.

The department was also told to provide proper treatment to the deceased’s father, who has also been kept at the centre.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Ikramullah Khan directed additional advocate general Waqar Ahmad, a representative of the provincial government, to explain in writing the cause of death of internee Bismillah Khan.

He was also told to produce details of the illness of the deceased’s father, Mian Ghaib Khan, and the medical treatment provided to him until now.

Orders treatment of deceased’s father, who too is interned in Kohat

The bench later adjourned hearing into a habeas corpus petition regarding the detention of the two until Oct 8.

When the bench took up for hearing the case, petitioner Mian Ajab Khan said his family belonged to Tirah valley in Khyber Agency and had shifted to Peshawar during displacement when a military operation was launched in their area against militants.

He said security forces had taken brother Bismillah Khan and father Mian Ghaib Khan into custody on Sept 8, 2012 and that he later learned about their internment at the Kohat centre.

The petitioner said before Ramadan, he had met the two internees at the centre and they were in good health. Few days ago, he stated he received a message to come and collect body of his brother from the centre.

He said first he was told that his brother had died a natural death and later he learned that his father was seriously ill.

Similarly, in another habeas corpus petition challenging the alleged illegal detention of two minor brothers who were taken away by the security forces from their school over three years ago, the bench directed the counsel of the tribal administration to provide details regarding their whereabouts.

The petition regarding their disappearance was field by their mother, Shan Bibi, who said the personnel of Frontier Corps had raided a school in Bara, Khyber Agency, and taken into custody her two sons Syed Nazeem (who was 11) and Ijaz Khan (who was 12) on Jan 7, 2011.

While the present case was pending the agency education officer as well as principal of the school had confirmed to the court that the two boys were taken away by the security personnel from the school.

Iqbal Durrani, lawyer for the administration, said a brother of the two alleged detainees was a commander of banned outfit Lashkar-i-Islam.

He added that one of their brothers had gone abroad. He said that the two boys might have disappeared with their own free will.

The chief justice observed that if their brother was a commander of a banned outfit it did not provide an excuse to the law enforcing agencies to pick up two minor boys.

Meanwhile, the bench also directed the provincial government to allow visitation rights to a petitioner for meeting his two brothers interned in two separate internment centres.

The bench observed that when certain rights were provided under the law, the same could not be denied by the government.

Petitioner Mohammad Rehman said his two brothers, Ali Rehman and Sajjad Ali, were handed over to the security forces by a peace committee in Kanjo area of Swat on Aug 28, 2009.

He said Sajjad Ali was interned at Lakki Marwat internment Centre whereas Ali Rehman had been interned at internment centre set up in the Pak-Austrian Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management, Swat.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2014