HYDERABAD, March 18: Jeay Sindh Qaumi Mahaz (JSQM) leader Sikandar Ali alias Akash Mallah and activist Noor Mohammad Khaskheli were released by a secret agency in Punjab's Sadiqabad district on Thursday night. They have reached home and family sources said that they looked run down and harassed.

“Doctors have advised us not to let Akash meet anyone for a few days unless he recovers completely. He appears too weak and is at present in Karachi,” Anwar Mallah, who had pursued the case of his younger brother's disappearance, said.

Mallah and Khaskheli were picked up by secret agency personnel in Qasimabad area when they were going to offer prayers on October 28, 2009. Till their release, their whereabouts remained unknown even to government officials, right from the DIG to the SHO of police station concerned.

Mallah, 37, had earlier also disappeared in 2006 and was let off after around eight months. The JSQM had given a strike call on Dec 4,2010, throughout Sindh to put pressure on government to release its leaders.

The apex court had taken notice of the case and held several proceedings in the matter till it was officially informed by the then DIG of police of Hyderabad zone, Sanaullah Abbasi, that he had been told by the DSP that ISI officials -- Moeen Memon and Shahjehan Baloch -- had picked up the activists and they were not in police custody.

The supreme court issued repeated notices to two officials but they didn't turn up in the court.

“He called me last night from a Sindh-bound bus using the driver's cell phone which he had boarded along with Noor Mohammad Khaskheli”, Mallah said.