PESHAWAR, May 4: The NWFP government on Tuesday told the Peshawar High Court that it did not know about the alleged illegal detention of four people by the army for nearly two months.

NWFP's advocate-general Barrister Jehanzeb Raheem, who appeared before a two-member bench, quoted the superintendent of police of Dera Ismail Khan as saying that police was not aware of any incident that involved detention of four persons.

The SHO of police station Dera Ismail Khan Cantonment also appeared in the court, saying that he was not aware about the picking of these alleged detainees from their respective residences, adding that the police had not raided their residences and it was not aware oftheir whereabouts.

The bench, comprising Justice Nasirul Mulk and Justice Ijazul Hassan, fixed Wednesday (May 5) as the next date of hearing and directed the deputy attorney-general Hamid Farooq Durrani to submit the point of view of the ministry of defence.

Two identical habeas corpus petitions had been filed by an agriculture scientist Dr Abdur Rehman and one of his relatives, Advocate Mohammad Aslam Khan.

Dr Rehman claimed that his son, Sohail Rehman, holding Canadian permanent resident card, was picked up by some officials in plainclothes and in army uniforms from his residence in Dera Ismail Khan between the night of March 11 and March 12 at about 3am.

Advocate Muhammad Aslam had stated that his and Dr Rehman's three nephews, Kashif Jamal, Mohammad Asif and Muhammad Farooq, were picked up from their Dera Ismail Khan residence on the same night and since then their whereabouts were not known.

Advocate Abdul Lateef Afridi appeared for petitioners, contending that detainees had not been produced before any court of law since their alleged arrest last month, adding that their continuous detention was unconstitutional and illegal.

Respondents in the petition are the government of Pakistan through secretaries of the ministries of defence and interior, the NWFP government through the home secretary, Dera Ismail Khan DPO and SHO of the DI Khan Cantt police station.