LAHORE, June 16: Lahore High Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Husain Chaudhry on Wednesday ordered the arrest of a Pakistani father of two Norwegian minors and some of his other family members who were allegedly resisting repatriation of the children to Norway.

Hannan (8) and Khaqan (7) were reportedly kidnapped by their father, Nasim Mumtaz, in Norway on March 22, 2003. Nasim and Atiya Parveen, both from Gujrat, got married in Norway but separated. A Norwegian court gave custody of the children to the mother and allowed the father to meet them.

The father met the children on March 22 last year and was supposed to hand them over to the mother on March 27, but he allegedly kidnapped them and brought them to Pakistan.

The Royal Norwegian Embassy in Islamabad submitted a writ petition to the Lahore High Court for recovery of the children. All efforts to recover the children had failed so far as families of both parents refused to cooperate with Gujrat police who were trying to recover the children under instructions of the LHC.

The chief justice also ordered attachment of a shopping plaza owned by the accused at Bhimber Road, Gujrat, with instructions that a senior civil judge would receive the rent from tenants till further orders.

The court directed the judge to seal the shops of tenants who refused to pay him the rent. Another order issued by the court was to freeze a bank account of the accused in Rawalpindi.

The bank has been instructed that Nasim Mumtaz should not be allowed to operate his account. The bank has also been instructed to inform the court and the investigating police if any amount was transferred from it to another bank.

The SSP for Gujrat and the DIG for Islamabad were directed to locate the children because the court came to know that the accused had taken them to his sister in the federal capital.

The court observed that relatives of the accused, including his brother, Farooq Riaz, his sister and the parents of wife Atiya and other relatives were not cooperating with police in the case.

Yet another part of the chief justice's order was that the Gujrat police should take into custody the father and the sister of Nasim Mumtaz living in Islamabad along with the accused and the two children.

The court authorized the police to arrest any person linked with the kidnapping. The court ordered that the persons arrested as such would not be released without court permission.

The Gujrat police have already registered a criminal case against Nasim Mumtaz and the investigation SP is supervising investigation. The Lahore High Court also released fresh photographs of the children as public notice hoping that people would pass on information about the children to Gujrat, Islamabad or Rawalpindi police on telephone No 15 or the nearest court.