KARACHI, Aug 1: Wife of civil rights campaigner Syed Iqbal Kazmi was kidnapped on Wednesday in the Defence area while she was on her way to the Sindh High Court to meet her husband, who was produced in the SHC to attend the hearing of one of his cases.

Mr Kazmi told Dawn in the City Courts that his wife Sadia Kazmi and a relative, Mohammad Imran Shehzad, general-secretary of the Awami Himayat Tehrik, were coming to see him in the Sindh High Court when four men in a Parado jeep took them away from the Defence Library bus stop on the Sunset Boulevard.

“I have time and again appealed to the courts to provide security to my family as some unknown persons are already bent upon torturing my wife and have been hurling threats over the telephone, especially at midnight,” he said.

He said although his own life was also in danger, he was more concerned about his family members.

He said his wife had received injuries on her arms and Imran Shehzad received many injuries on the abdomen and other parts of his body.

“I have informed the SHC of the problems I have been facing and I was assured that proper security would be provided to my family,” he remarked.

Sadia Kazmi, wife of Iqbal Kazmi, told Dawn over the telephone that the police at the Defence police station had refused to register a kidnapping case without our going through the medico-legal process. She said the process was completed, but the case was not registered till evening.

She said the kidnappers beat them up and as a result Imran Shehzad fainted. “We were dropped at a distance in the Defence area,” she said, adding: “We came to the SHC and got our statements recorded here.”

Meanwhile, Syed Mohammad Iqbal Kazmi, who was arrested by police on June 12 for fraud, was produced in the court of a judicial magistrate, South, who extended his judicial remand till Aug 4.

His case was transferred on July 21, by JM-1, East, Allah Bachayo, to the court of JM-IV, South, Shamsuddin Junejo, who adjourned the trial till Aug 4.

He said the Sindh High Court had directed him to get bail in the cases from a lower court to be able to concentrate on the petitions he had filed against the Karachi Electric Supply Corporation and the mobile telephone companies.

He has also filed a petition against the Sindh government and Muttahida Qaumi Movement leadership, stating that they were responsible for the May12 violence.