ISLAMABAD, March 8: The Supreme Court was asked here on Thursday to order establishment of an independent commission on disappearances which should comprise senior lawyers, parliamentarians and former judges.

The commission should record testimony of people who had suffered disappearances and family members of those who were still untraced, a petition filed by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan pleaded.

A bench of the court comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Justice Mohammad Nawaz Abbasi and Justice Mian Shakirullah Jan took up the petition of the HRCP along with an application of Amina Masood Janjua regarding missing people, including her husband, whose unexplained incarceration for one and a half years is believed to have been caused by their suspected links with Al Qaeda or other militant organisations.

The bench summoned Attorney-General Makhdoom Ali Khan for March 26 in the HRCP case when the application of Mrs Janjua would also be taken up.

The case had to be adjourned when Deputy Attorney-General Nasir Saeed Shaikh informed the court that the attorney-general was indisposed. However, he assured the bench that the government was making efforts to trace the remaining 10 of 43 missing people.

“Please ask the government what they have done during the last three weeks, which the court had granted to find out the missing people,” Mrs Janjua questioned.

Recalling the popular notion that justice delayed is justice denied, she asked from the court what answer she would give to her children who were waiting for many months to see their father.

“We are doing our best,” the chief justice, however, observed.

Meanwhile, Fakhruddin G. Ibrahim, representing the HRCP, told the court that a list of 148 missing people had also been submitted along the petition, of which one had been killed and six had returned home.

Filed on behalf of HRCP chairperson Asma Jahangir, the petition sought compensation to victims and families of the disappeared, abducted, illegally arrested detained or tortured people.

One of the pray is to institute prosecution against officers of the federal government, their agents and their subordinates who are responsible for illegal arrests, arbitrary detentions, abduction and disappearances of people and for subjecting them to mental and physical torture.

The petition prayed that the court should invite families, friends and relatives of disappeared people to file detailed particulars of victims and order production of disappeared people. The whereabouts of disappeared people and charges, if any, against them should be made known.

The pattern of disappearances showed that this illegal practice was systematic and being patronised by federal and provincial governments, the petition alleged.

A large number of abducted people belonged either to nationalist parties, their student wings, postgraduate students studying in different universities, particularly in Sindh and Balochistan, members of different religious groups, parties, journalists, scientists and even some members of the armed forces, the petition said.

Most alarmingly, the petition said, women family members and their minor children had also disappeared and a number of them had subsequently been released after “terrifying” investigations.

Testimonies received by the HRCP, the petition said, had revealed that secret services or agencies illegally maintained private prisons or safe houses equipped with all sorts of electronic and manual equipment of torture instruments. And the people were detained without any warrants, order of detention or charges and were never produced before courts, the petition alleged.