PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Thursday directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to produce a detainee, who was taken away from a judicial lock-up in Bajaur tribal district, on July 11 as an official said that he was presently imprisoned at an internment centre in Swat.

A two-member bench of PHC Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Abdul Shakoor Khan had a day earlier ordered to produce the detainee, Abdul Wali Khan, on Thursday.

An official of home department, Mohammad Kamran, who is focal person of different departments in cases of “missing persons”, informed the court that the detainee was taken away from the lock-up in Khar, Bajaur tribal district, as the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) was repealed through Fata Interim Governance Regulation, which was declared unconstitutional by the high court last year.

Official says detainee presently imprisoned in Swat internment centre

He said that to avoid legal complications, the prisoner was shifted to internment centre at Fizza Gut, Swat, under the Action (in aid of civil power) Regulation, 2011. He requested the court to allow some time for the production of the detainee before the court.

The bench was hearing a writ petition filed by the detainee’s father Fazal Raheem, who claimed that his son was taken into custody by security personnel on March 1, 2017, and subsequently in 2018 he was handed over to the administration of the then Bajaur Agency.

The petitioner’s counsel, Shabir Hussain Gigyani, said that after the merger of erstwhile Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) into Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a writ petition was filed in the high court on behalf of the detainee as at that time he was in the custody of tribal administration.

In the meantime, he stated, the high court disposed of the petition as regular courts had started functioning for ex-Fata and had directed that the petitioner should approach the said courts.

He contended while handing over the detainee to the administration, the security forces had directed that he should be convicted and should be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He added that later on, an additional advocate general informed the court that the detainee had been convicted.

However, the counsel stated that the relatives came to know that the detainee had been taken away from judicial lock-up at Khar by personnel of 206 Wing of Pakistan Army and since then he had been incommunicado.

The counsel pointed out that the deputy commissioner in his comments had admitted that the detainee was taken away from lock-up by the security forces.

Published in Dawn, July 5th, 2019