KARACHI: A day after human rights bodies asked authorities to make public the detention of Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum’s Saeed Baloch, Rangers on Tuesday produced him along with three others before the administrative judge of the antiterrorism courts and informed him about their 90-day preventive detention for questioning.

The PFF general secretary, Saeed Baloch, went missing on Jan 16 and his family alleged that he was in the custody of the Rangers. Only on Monday, the South Asians for Human Rights condemned his arrest and detention and demanded his immediate release.

The paramilitary soldiers along with their legal team produced Mr Baloch and three others — Mahar Bux, Dil Murad and Saleem Deedag — before the administrative judge, Justice Syed Mohammad Farooq Shah of the Sindh High Court.

The Rangers team claimed that the suspects were taken into custody on Monday in a Lyari locality upon receiving “credible information” about their alleged involvement in extortion and other offences that came within the ambit of the Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997.

The court was told that the held suspects were placed under three-month preventive detention under Section 11-EEEE of the ATA for an inquiry.

In compliance with Section 11-EEEE (3) of the ATA, the detainees were produced along with detention orders and jail warrants for the information of the court, they added.

Meanwhile, a Rangers spokesman said in a statement that the suspects were arrested on Jan 25 within the jurisdiction of the Kalri police station.

He added that during initial questioning they confessed to having funded outlawed Peoples Amn Committee leader Uzair Jan Baloch, Lyari gangster Noor Mohammad alias Baba Ladla and the proscribed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) for a long time.

The spokesman said that the suspects gave employment to 150 alleged gangsters in the Fishermen Cooperative Society (FCS) at the behest of Uzair Baloch.

The statement further said that the Lyari gangsters and BLA used these funds to purchase weapons for use in Karachi and Balochistan.

The suspects also admitted that millions of rupees were illegally given to political personalities, it alleged. The suspects were also booked in murder cases, which were withdrawn on political grounds, it concluded.

Contrary to the Rangers’ claim, the family of Mr Baloch had recently filed a petition in the Sindh High Court regarding his illegal detention.

The petitioner said that Mr Baloch along with Mahar Bux and Dil Murad had been in the unlawful detention of the Rangers since Jan 16. He asked the court to declare that the detention of Mr Baloch and others was illegal and unauthorised and direct the Rangers to produce them in court and set them at liberty.

Published in Dawn, January 27th, 2016