KARACHI, June 4: Family members of Abdul Wahid Qambar, who has allegedly been in the custody of security agencies since March, have expressed concern about his well-being and urged human rights organisations and the media to take up the issue.

Mr Qambar’s 12-year-old daughter Sherry, accompanied by her mother and younger sister Melub, spoke at a press conference at the Karachi Press Club on Monday and said she feared for her father’s life.

She said her family belonged to the Thump area of the Makran region. On March 14, she said, her father had been picked up by law-enforcement agencies and since then his whereabouts were unknown. She feared that since the cases of “enforced disappearances” had become common in Balochistan, her father might meet the same fate.

According to Sherry, though the ISPR had conceded that her father was under arrest, it was not being made public. She urged the government to produce her father in a court of law if he had committed any crime. She said the family members had also filed a petition in the Balochistan High Court on May 21 and the court had also issued notices to the government agencies concerned. She regretted that there had been no progress on the issue so far.

Under these circumstances, she said, her family had no other option but to seek the cooperation of the media and human rights organisations to take up the issue seriously and put pressure on the government to produce Mr Qambar in the court of law.