PESHAWAR, July 3: A student of grade VIII, displaced from Bara tehsil of Khyber Agency, had been in illegal detention for the last 19 months after he was taken away from Jalozai camp by law enforcement agencies, his brother alleged.

The family of the alleged detainee, residing in the camp for last nearly two years, has been moving from pillar to post in his search but to no avail.

The detainee, Jamshed Khan, the youngest among five sons and one daughter of Mahabat Khan, was a student at Government High School Akhoon Talab in Bara.

After launch of military operation curfew was clamped in their area and the school was closed. The family took shelter at Jalozai camp.

The elder brother of the detainee, Lal Behram, told Dawn that on Dec 7, 2009, the personnel of different law enforcement agencies including officials of Pabbi police station raided the camp and took away his brother. Since then, he said, his brother, who was around 15 at that time, had been missing.

“We had handed over the boy to Ijaz Khan, an official at Jalozai police post, who onward handed him over to some personnel of an agency,” Mr Behram alleged.

He said that his mother had been suffering from various ailments as she had been constantly weeping as the detainee was her favourite child.

“A former detainee informed me after he was set free from a detention facility that my brother was also detained along with him,” he said, adding the said detainee could not identify the agency in whose custody they were.

Following his disappearance Mr Behram had filed a petition before the court of district and sessions judge under section 491 Code of Criminal Procedure. That petition was dismissed as the detainee could not be traced in the police station when a bailiff visited it.

Later on, he filed a writ petition before the high court challenging disappearance of his brother.

As he had no money to pay to his counsel, therefore, he did not turn up before the high court. A two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and Justice Mazhar Alam Miankehl dismissed the petition owing to non-prosecution on Nov 2, 2010.

The family is a poor one and Mr Behram himself is a labourer. He said that the result of the court proceedings was also not encouraging and they had also no money to pay to their lawyer.

He said that they had no links with any militant outfit and his brother was innocent.