KARACHI, June 12: After denial by police that they had raided the house of Mehmood Fattani or had picked him up along with three others, in connection with the Daniel Pearl case, the Sindh High Court directed on Wednesday additional advocate-general Sindh to seek instructions and ascertain facts from the provincial Home Department.

A division bench, comprising Chief Justice Saiyed Saeed Ashhad and Justice Musheer Alam, gave the direction when the constitutional petition of Najma Mehmood, wife of Mehmood Fattani, came up for consideration.

The court told the AAG to do so till June 17.

The court noted police’s denial in the comments filed on June 10 in which the government had taken the position that the respondents had not raided the petitioner’s house. Therefore no question arose for apprehension on the part of the petitioner about her husband and others.

The respondents had stated that “no one has been arrested, so there is no ground for their production in the court.”

The petitioner, through counsel Khawaja Naveed Ahmed, had moved the petition claiming that her husband, his two brothers and their brother-in-law were arrested by police in a raid on her family house during the night of May 28/29.

She had complained that despite the passage of several days neither police had released them, nor produced them in a court of law.

The petitioner’s husband, her brother-in-law and Mr Ismail were in illegal custody of the Investigating Team of the Daniel Pearl case, she had claimed.

The counsel for the petitioner also filed an application praying the court to order inquiry into the alleged illegal detention of the petitioner’s husband and other detainees besides registering cases against the police official concerned.