KARACHI: The Sindh High Court directed the police on Wednesday to make efforts for the recovery of 16 missing children and submit a compliance report within a month.

A two-judge SHC bench headed by Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi took up a petition about missing children for hearing and asked the police about the reasons behind the disappearance of the children.

The police officials contended that some children left their homes for lack of interest in schooling and others fled because of torture by their parents.

Sharjeel Memon gets bail in another case

Justice Rizvi said it was very unfortunate that generally parents were reluctant to report the matters of missing children to police and asked for counselling of parents by psychiatrists and social organisations.

The bench also directed the police to make serious efforts for the recovery of the children and sought a compliance report.

Earlier, on a directive of the SHC, the police had lodged 23 FIRs regarding the missing children at different police stations of the city. Later, six of them returned home.

The petition was filed by Roshni Research and Development Welfare in 2012 seeking court directives to the provincial police for considering the missing children’s cases, who went missing in different parts of Karachi, a cognizable offence and registering FIRs in this regard.

The NGO alleged that cases of missing children were not properly investigated by the police which resulted in many avoidable deaths.

Sharjeel gets bail in second case

A day after obtaining post-arrest bail in a reference about alleged corruption in awarding advertisements to the electronic media, another SHC bench on Wednesday also granted an interim bail to former provincial information minister Sharjeel Inam Memon in a case regarding assets beyond his known source of income till Aug 6.

The former minister through his lawyer moved the SHC seeking pre-arrest bail in the fresh case about assets initiated by the National Accountability Bureau.

After a preliminary hearing, the two-judge SHC bench headed by Justice K.K. Agha granted interim bail against a surety bond of Rs1 million till Aug 6 and issued notice to NAB for the next hearing.

On Tuesday, the same bench had allowed a post-arrest bail of Sharjeel Memon against a surety bond of Rs5 million and also asked the interior ministry to place his name on the Exit Control List.

NAB had filed a reference in 2016 against the former minister, then provincial information secretary Zulfiqar Ali Shallwani, other officials of the information department and private persons for allegedly committing corruption from 2013 to 2015 in awarding advertisements of provincial government’s awareness campaigns to the electronic media that caused a loss of around Rs3.27 billion.

The former information minister with 11 others had landed in prison in October 2017 after a division bench of the SHC dismissed their interim pre-arrest bail applications.

Published in Dawn, June 27th, 2019