PESHAWAR, June 21: The Supreme Court has ordered the NWFP police to search for a woman and her five children who had been allegedly abducted when her husband was in prison.

In a human rights case a few days ago, Justice Sardar Mohammad Raza Khan of the Supreme Court had directed the NWFP provincial police officer to recover the abducted members of the family and produce them in his chamber within a fortnight.

The court had also put on notice the NWFP advocate-general directing him to appear in the case on June 26, the next date of hearing.

It is learnt that police high-ups had directed police officials in Nowshera, Charssada and Peshawar districts to recover the kidnapped family as soon as possible.

The woman’s husband, Maqbali Khan, has been engaged in continuous protests since April 2005 when he was released from a prison in Karachi. He observed hunger strikes on several occasions in Peshawar and recently staged a protest in Islamabad.

He had filed an application in the Supreme Court over which the court took suo motu notice and issued a notice to the NWFP PPO and advocate-general. He claimed that he was implicated in various false cases in which he was acquitted and when finally he returned to Peshawar he found his wife and five children, including four daughters, missing.

Mr Khan alleged that his rivals were drug traffickers and were influential people and were involved in the abduction of his family.

He claimed that he was employed by Rehmanullah Khan, an influential person of Charssada, as bus driver and when he realised that Mr Khan was not a nice person he quit his job.

He claimed that after that Rehmanullah along with his father-in-law and the former husband of his wife started victimising him and his family.

Initially, the issue surfaced in 2001 when Mr Khan’s elder daughter was allegedly taken away and gang-raped by the accused persons. He registered a case against them under the Hudood Ordinance, following which he was implicated in a narcotics case in Kohat in which he has already been acquitted by the court.

Mr Khan claimed that when he was released by the court he was implicated in another case in Swat in 2002. While he was in prison, his daughter was again abducted and forced to give a statement against him. He alleged that when he was released from Swat he was implicated in a narcotics case in Karachi in which he was not even charged.

He remained imprisoned in Karachi from June 2002 till April 2005, when finally the trial court acquitted him while the trial had yet to be concluded. The trial court accepted his application under section 265-K of the Criminal Procedure Code under which the court is empowered to acquit a person before conclusion of the trial when on the basis of the evidence on record there is no possibility of his or her conviction.