HYDERABAD, Sept 16: Tired but unshaken Manu Bheel is still looking for his eight family members allegedly kidnapped by an influential landlord on May 2, 1998.
He became an icon of resilience by observing a token hunger strike for a record 1,287 days in protest against the alleged kidnapping and also against the police failure to recover his loved ones.
Manu pinned hopes on the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which is currently visiting Pakistan to probe issue of missing persons. “Can the UN team do something to help recover my family?” he asks.
He has challenged acquittal of the prime suspect of the case in the Sindh High Court’s principal bench. “We filed an appeal on April 17, 2010 against exoneration of 14 accused by the additional district judge of Mirpurkhas,” said Manu’s Karachi-based counsel, Faisal Siddiqui.
“In fact, the case was quashed by trial court for want of evidence… because no one turned up in the court. So we need to get this judgment set aside first,” said Siddiqui.
Manu says on May 2,1998 Kheera Bheel (father), Akho (mother), Jalal (brother), Mota (wife), Moomal and Dheli (daughters), Chamman and Kanji (sons) and Kirta (guest) were kidnapped by the henchmen of Abdul Rehman Mari and taken away in a vehicle while they were working on the farmland of Waryam Memon.
Manu and his 15 family members were among the 56 bonded peasants who were got released by the then Special Task Force (STF) of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan headed by late Shakeel Pathan in March 1996 after a raid on private jails led by district magistrate of Sanghar.
Mr Pathan, who died in 1988 in a car accident, was considered to be the sole voice for the rights of bonded peasants.
“When the chief justice of Pakistan took notice of my case recently and police started a probe, one Jumo Bheel and his colleague confessed to keeping seven of my family members at the instance of Abdul Rehman Mari,” said Manu.
The prime accused, Abdul Rehman Marri, was arrested by police after cancellation of his bail but he finally managed to get himself acquitted. Since then police have made no significant progress on recovery of the family, he said.
“It hurts me to think why police have failed to act against the people who are holding my family in wrongful confinement,” he said.
Manu lives in Sikandarabad Hari camp in Jamshoro which was set up on government land in the year 2000 after a large number of haris were released from different areas in lower Sindh by STF and later by other NGOs.
In the course of reinvestigation, police did recover two young girls and claimed that they were his daughters. But he believed it was a trap.
“When I went to see the girls I took two old men with me and then asked the girls to identify who was their father. The girls couldn’t identify any of us,” he recalled.
He said that police obtained their DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) samples, which proved negative. “It was a trap. If I had admitted the girls were mine police would have put me under arrest on charges of false identification and would have dropped charges against Marri,” he claimed.
Manu staged a token hunger strike for a record 1,287 days, starting on Jan 19, 2003 and ending on Dec 21, 2005. “I had to end it for fear of Marri’s men who used to visit the press club and stare at me,” he said.
He said that some peasants of his community who were got released from private jails in 2006 had told police (and their statements were video filmed) that his father, mother and son had died. He said that he could bet his life on it that Marri had kept his family hostage.
“The UN team can help me. I am not lying. If I prove wrong I may be hanged. I am ready to appear anywhere, for I am 100 per cent sure that my family members are still being held hostage by Abdul Rehman Marri and his henchmen,” he said.
