KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday issued a show-cause notice to a senior police officer for not appointing an investigating officer to probe into the case of three “missing” persons.

It also asked the interior secretary to furnish information from an internment centre in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa regarding the trio.

The court directed the DIG (investigation) to entrust the investigation of the case to an officer not below the rank of an SSP.

A two-judge SHC bench headed by Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto was hearing a set of petitions about missing persons.

It asked the interior secretary and an assistant attorney general to collect information from an internment centre in KP regarding the three missing persons — Nasir Khan, Faiz Ali Khan and Maaz Khan — and furnish the same till March 20.

At the outset of the hearing on Wednesday, the bench said that it had issued direction in a previous hearing to collect information from the internment centre, but it had not been complied with.

A DSP informed the bench that the IO of the case was under suspension. However, the bench observed that it was the duty of the SSP (investigation) to entrust investigation to any other officer, which had not been done. The court issued a show-cause notice to the SSP as to why he failed to discharge his legal obligations.

Petitioner Saleem Khan submitted that the three men were taken into custody in February 2018 in Shah Latif Town. He sought the whereabouts of the missing persons.

Meanwhile, the same bench once again directed the home secretary to collect the required information regarding another missing person and place it before the court on the next hearing.

In the last hearing, the court had asked a federal law officer as well as the home secretary to obtain information about the confinement of Syed Naeem Haider Najafi after it was informed that his case had been sent for sanction for trial by a military court.

On Wednesday, the provincial home department submitted that letters had been issued to the army’s Corps V and office of the Judge Advocate General (JAG) branch as well as the provincial police officer in order to ascertain that in which jail the missing person was being confined.

The bench again asked the home secretary to expedite the efforts and submit the required information till March 20.

Syed Ali Haider Najafi moved the SHC submitting that his younger brother was implicated in a number of cases by the Rizvia Society police in 2013 and later he was released on bail.

Published in Dawn, February 14th, 2019