PESHAWAR, April 9: The whereabouts of Asif Chhoto, chief of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, and four others has been unknown since they were allegedly picked up by an intelligence agency about six months ago. Family members of three of the detainees, Ziauddin, Shehzad Gul and Sattar Khan, who belong to Peshawar, said that they had been regularly visiting Rawalpindi and contacting different law-enforcement agencies but they were neither being told about their whereabouts nor the charges against them.

“Asif Chhoto and four others have still not been produced before any court of law. They are being held incommunicado,” said father of one of the detainees.

An activist of the proscribed organisation told Dawn that Asif had been picked up on Sept 24 from Rawalpindi. Three other detainees were arrested later. He said that the fifth detainee was identified as Rashid alias Shahid Sathi.

He said the five were among scores of militants who had been picked by different agencies and were being kept incommunicado for the past several months, adding that some of them had been in detention for over a year.

The fate of the two sisters, who were suspected by intelligence agencies of plotting to carry out suicide bombings, and an alleged activist of the same banned outfit, Bilal Saifullah, is still unknown 10 months after their ‘disappearances’.

They have not been produced before any court of law since they were reportedly picked up by an intelligence agency from Swat district on June 4, 2005.

Earlier, Hameed Khan, father of Bilal, had filed a petition in the Peshawar High Court, claiming that one of the two sisters, Arifa Baloch, was married to Bilal while the second sister, Saba Baloch, was married to Asif Chhoto.

The mother of Bilal, Gul Hamdana, who was allegedly picked up along with them on June 4, was ‘released’ in September. She claimed that she had been kept with the two girls. She was told by their captors that the girls would also be released soon, but she is still awaiting the return of her son and the two girls.

News items about the arrest of Asif Chhoto had appeared in all national newspapers on Sept 29 but no senior officer had owned his arrest.

Similarly, newspapers cited the arrest of the two sisters on June 10, but the federal interior ministry had denied their arrest before the Peshawar High Court.

The petition filed by Hameed Khan, challenging the detention of the two sisters, was dismissed by the court on Aug 22.

There has been no action on appeals made by Sher Mohammad Baloch, father of the two girls, to the president, the prime minister and the federal interior minister.

Mr Baloch, a banker in Karachi, in his appeals had stated that his daughters were innocent and their maternal uncle, Gul Hassan, an activist of the ‘Lashkar’, had falsely implicated them. Gul Hassan had been sentenced to death on 45 counts by an anti-terrorism court.

Mr Baloch said that Gul Hassan had been annoyed after he turned down his request for help while he was in the prison, adding that Gul Hassan’s wife had taken away his daughters on Jun 29, 2004, after which they did not return.