PESHAWAR, March 26: A young man kept in ‘illegal’ detention allegedly by an intelligence agency for over two months was set free here Tuesday night.

The detainee, Syed Wilayat Ali Shah, was brought blindfolded in a vehicle and was left on the Grand Trunk Road near Gulbahar area at about 8.30 pm. The alleged detainee told Dawn that there were scores of other persons detained in the premises where he had been kept. Most of those detainees, he said, appeared to be Afghans.

“My captors were asking me some questions about which I had no knowledge. They suspected me of some foreign origin and were asking which languages I can speak apart from Urdu and Pashto,” Mr Shah told Dawn.

Mr Shah, who is about 21, has been running a stationery shop at Gulbahar No. 2 and was picked by some officials in plain clothes backed by local police on Jan 21.

The detainee was not sure about where he had been kept, but believed that he might have been detained outside Peshawar as they had travelled for about two or two-and-a-half hours while his captors were taking him away.

He said that he was kept well and also provided proper food during the detention. “They interrogated me in isolation for three to four days following which I was shifted to an enclosure where scores of other people had also been kept,” he said, adding “it appeared as if my captors had forgotten me once I was transferred there.”

During his absence his family members continued searching for him at different places. His father, Syed Kifayat Shah, who is vice-principal of a government school, had also approached Gulbahar Police Station, but the officials there expressed inability to help him.

He had also contacted some lawyers for moving the court, but he was told that in the absence of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry there was no use of filing any petition in the court.

Initially, he was told by some family members and friends to remain silent over the issue and his son would return back. However, after 50 days when he lost all hopes of his safe return he approached the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and Ms Amina Masood Janjua, who has been heading a movement for the release of her husband and scores of other missing persons.