HYDERABAD: Babur Jamali, 29, finally returned home in Golarchi, Badin district, after about five months.
He was picked up allegedly by the police and men in civvies from Halanaka in Hyderabad on December 8, 2011, over suspicion of having links with Sindhi nationalists involved in subversive activities.
On Thursday night, a week after the Sindh High Court (SHC) issued a stern warning about his disappearance, he was thrown onto the Karachi-Thatta Road near Gharo at around 1:15 am.
Babur is drained and shaken. So are his parents, whose other son, Ayaz Jamali, Babur’s younger brother, is still missing. The brothers are among dozens, if not hundreds, of enforced disappearances in Sindh attributed to the ‘agencies’.
Ayaz was abducted on April 16 from outside the Hyderabad Circuit Bench of the SHC, where he came for Babur’s hearing. He is a final-year student of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology (MUET), while Babur used to work for an oil company in Sukkur.
The family filed two separate petitions in SHC’s Hyderabad bench. The FIRs were registered at Hatri and Cantt police stations.
According to their father, Ghulam Hussain Jamali, Babur was blindfolded when he was dumped at the highway. “He also had marks of torture and shackle marks on his wrists.” He says that Babur does not know where his younger brother is. The family assumes that the two were kept separately. “All the while when he [Babur] was with them, they kept asking him about his links with the Shafi Burfat group,” he said. The group is a faction of Jeay Sindh and is blamed for anti-state activities.
As the Supreme Court hears cases of enforced disappearances from Balochistan, the saga continues to unfold in Sindh. From Hyderabad alone, at least 12 people have been reportedly whisked away after the May 2 ATM blasts outside National Bank branches across Sindh. Only two families of the hostages have surfaced and have filed petitions in the SHC.
Shoaib Qureshi, the news director in Sindh TV, sought the court’s help after exhausting all other options to try and find his brother Najeeb. “Sometimes the authorities will admit that he is in their custody but they are also as quick to deny any knowledge about his whereabouts,” he said. “In the earlier days we were told that he was at the CIA centre and would be released soon. Later they said that he might be in Karachi. Now they don’t have anything to say.”
His mother, Mukhtiar Qureshi, has filed the petition through advocate Noor Naz Agha, but the notices have yet to be served to the people she has named in it.
Advocate Agha said that she was trying to move the hearing of the case to the SHC in Karachi. Niaz Hussain Sodho is another petitioner whose brother, Qurban Sodho, was allegedly kidnapped from near a tea shop near Civil hospital on the evening of May 2.
According to his counsel, Advocate Muhammad Suleman Unar, the Market police personnel and CIA men took him away. However both deny it. In last week’s hearing of the case, Sindh’s chief secretary, IG, DIG and Hyderabad SSP and Market SHO were issued notices for May 24.
However, Hyderabad SSP Haseeb Afzal Beg denied that the police detained any suspect in the aftermath of the ATM blasts. “There are many names nominated in the FIRs and we are putting in our best efforts to apprehend them. But so far no one has been arrested,” he said while talking to The Express Tribune. However, he acknowledged that Babur Jamali and Ayaz Jamali went missing from Hyderabad, “but this was before the blasts”. He also confirmed that Babur was found from Gharo.
As the issue continues to raise hackles, another family from Jamshoro protested on Friday outside the Hyderabad Press Club. At a press conference held later, they complained about the enforced disappearance of 25-year-old Asif Bhutto. An employee of Jamshoro Power House, Rafique Bhutto, claimed that the Jamshoro police, led by DSP Manzoor Panhwar, barged into their house on May 16, in the residential colony of the power house. The family believes that the only fathomable reason behind his disappearance is their family relation with Muzaffar Bhutto, a Jeay Sindh leader who is also missing since February 2011.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 19th, 2012.
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