PESHAWAR, July 1: An extended Afghan family of 55 members has been facing severe hardship since their main bread-winner was picked up allegedly by security personnel more than three months ago and his whereabouts are still unknown.

Sher Afzal, 55, was allegedly picked up by the khasadars on March 22 from his general store in the Khyber Agency. He has been kept incommunicado and has not been produced before a court.

Family members told Dawn that they were informed by some officials that he had been picked up on the orders of an intelligence agency and was later handed over to it.

“I have neither talked to the media nor moved the court as I was advised that this could anger the agency and delay the release of my father,” said Shamsur Rehman, a 27-year-old son of Sher Afzal, who is running the general store after his father’s disappearance.

He told Dawn that he could not face his family members because they had regularly been asking him if he had any information about his father.

“We are facing various problems as the people who provided different items to my father for the store have no longer trusted us and stopped providing us such items,” he said, adding that the business was running in loss and it was difficult to make both ends meet.

“People have started approaching us for money which they claimed they have lent to our father,” he added.

Sher Afzal has two wives and 11 children. He was also looking after the families of his four late brothers who were killed in rivalry. Moreover, some of the sons of the detainee have got married and they are living in the same house.

“I still don’t know why my father has been detained. He was a member of Hizb-i-Islami of Gulbadin Hikmatyar during the Russian war, but after the deaths of my uncles he quit the organisation and started living a peaceful life,” Mr Rehman claimed.

He said that human rights activists had also contacted his family members, but they refrained from filing a case in the court as they feared that this could harm his father.

“I was told by one of my friends that intelligence personnel are Muslims and they cannot detain an innocent person. But now I think they are so callous. They have not even informed us where they have kept my father,” Mr Rehman said in choked voice.