HYDERABAD, April 15: The Sindh High Court circuit bench on Wednesday ordered four Badin's Golarchi taluka police officials, including the taluka police officer (investigations), to appear before it on April 22 on a constitutional petition against illegal detention.

The order was passed on Nazeer Ahmed's petition seeking production of his son, Afzal Mehmood, who was allegedly picked up by the police. According to the petition, a girl student, Uzma, was attacked by miscreants on February 21, 2004. A report was lodged with the Golarchi taluka police.

The following day, social workers, including Afzal Mehmood, observed a hunger strike and raised slogans against Golarchi police station SHO Golarchi Nand Lal. The police allegedly arrested Mehmood, maltreated protesters and lodged cases against them. However, the police did not show Mehmood's arrest and took him to some unknown place, keeping him in wrongful detention.

The petitioner said he had sought release of his son but in vain. The police, he added, had not allowed him to meet his son and had refused to disclose his whereabouts.

The petitioner then filed an application before the Badin sessions judge for the recovery of his son. He said that since he had filed the petition, police officials, including the SHO and the TPO (investigations), Ali Nawaz Khaskheli, had started harassing him.

He said the TPO and Ayub Bhutto, the official-in-charge of investigations, were working under the influence of SHO Nand Lal. He feared that his son would be killed by the two policemen, and said the police had also implicated his another son, Arshad Mehmood, and had declared him an absconder in a case lodged at the Golarchi police station.

According to the petitioner, the sessions judge dismissed his application without providing him with an opportunity to rebut a police statement submitted by the Badin DPO who, he said, was also supporting respondents SHO and ASI Abdul Fateh Tunio. He sought production of his son before the high court bench.