PESHAWAR, Oct 1: Family members of a rickshaw driver, who has allegedly been in detention of an intelligence agency for 17 months, are under great mental suffering because nobody knows anything about him.

The detainee, Ali Sher, hailing from the Mardan district was picked up on May 3, 2005, after the arrest of alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Faraj Al-Libi.

His brother Mohammad Israr told Dawn that they had been moving from pillar to post to get some clue about his whereabouts but none of the officials were willing to say anything about him.

Ali Sher was detained only 18 days after his marriage. During disappearance, his wife gave birth to a baby girl, Ruqia. The eight-month-old child has yet to see her father.

While, Pakistani intelligence agencies have been under fire from various human rights bodies, including the Amnesty International and Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, ‘for enforced disappearances during the US-led war on terror’, more and more cases of such mysterious disappearances are being reported.

“Initially, we came to know about the arrest of Ali Sher through some media reports quoting some unnamed agency officials that he was providing shelter to Al-Libi,” said Mr Israr.

He said: “We are poor people and how could we provide shelter to other people. We live under a joint family system and it is impossible in a Pukhtun society to keep a stranger in the house.”

He said that his parents were suffering from heart ailments and they were regularly asking him whether he had received any information about Ali Sher.

“My sister-in-law and other family members are now on anti-depressant drugs,” Mr Israr said, adding that they were poor people as he was a rickshaw driver and it was hard for them to make both the ends meet.

Mr Israr, hailing from Mardan district also the hometown of Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee Gen Ahsan Saleem Hayat, said that he had contacted some relatives of Gen Hayat for help, but they also declined to favour him.

He added that the detention of his brother might be a case of mistaken identity and urged the government to release his brother.