ISLAMABAD, March 2: The government on Wednesday informed the National Assembly that 14 custodial deaths had taken place across the country during the last six months.

The information was placed before the house by the Minister of State for Interior, Dr Shahzad Waseem, in response to a question by MNA Fauzia Wahab.

The minister came under fire from the opposition members who accused him of misleading the House by underplaying the magnitude and number of custodial killings. But he said he was relying on the figures given by the home departments of the provinces.

The opposition stopped short of staging a token walkout on the intervention of Speaker Ch Amir Hussain who asked them to move motion under relevant rules if they felt wrong figures were provided by the minister.

The minister said that seven custodial deaths each took place in Sindh and the Punjab. He said the home departments of Balochistan and NWFP did not report any case of custodial death during the last six months.

According to the details, 2 custodial killings took place in Lahore, 4 in Sheikhupura, one each in Gujranwala and Hyderabad and 6 in Karachi. Dr Waseem said FIRs had been registered in all the cases of custodial killings.

When the opposition MNAs Akber Chitrali and Abul Khair Muhammad asked the minister about steps taken to check the menace of custodial killings, the minister said the Police Order 2002 was being implemented which would help the government improve the situation.

The opposition MNA's said in many instances custodial deaths occurred due to torture by police but the guilty police officials were given protection as the investigating officers of these cases also belonged to the same department.

HIV/HEPATITIS: In reply to questions by MNAs Riaz Fatiana, Sherry Rehman, Riaz Peerzada and Mehreen Anwer Raja, the health minister, Nasir Khan, explained the reasons for a significant difference in the figures of HIV cases in the country as reported by the government and the UN agencies.

He said there were 5600 HIV victims in the country while HIV cases in Karachi had increased from 4 per cent to 7.6 per cent during the last one year. The minister said the increase in HIV cases in Karachi was among injecting drug users.

When asked why the UN reported an estimated 60,000 (sixty thousand) HIV cases in Pakistan, the minister said the WHO figures were "estimates" while the statistics given by the government pertained to the actual number of HIV victims. The minister said Pakistan was a low prevalent but high risk country for HIV.

In his answer to a related question, the minister said the government would launch an aggressive campaign to check incidence of Hepatitis in the country which was reaching alarming situation.

The minister said a meeting was held with the prime minister on Tuesday during which it was decided to tackle the problem on a war footing. The opposition members alleged the government was not taking adequate steps to check pollution in water ways which was identified as one of the major cause of spread of Hepatitis.