Missing IT engineer: Police told to get sketches of suspected abductors

DIG tells court they have traced hundreds of calls the victim exchanged with a woman

ISLAMABAD: In a bid to recover a software engineer, who has been missing from the capital for over two years, the police were told on Tuesday to get sketches made of those who had whisked him away.

This was directed by a two-member bench of the Islamabad High Court (IHC), comprising Justice Amir Mahmood and Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, as they heard a case pertaining to the disappearance of software engineer Sajid Mehmood.

During the hearing, Deputy Attorney General Arshad Mehmood Kiani presented a report from the defence ministry.

The Operations Deputy Inspector General of Islamabad Police Raja Faisal also appeared before the court.

Justice Kiyani posed a series of tough questions to them including which security agency was involved in the software engineer’s abduction? Why was he forcibly disappeared?

He further remarked that due to the police’s failure, a woman had been distressed for nearly two and a half years.

DIG Faisal told the court that the software engineer was in contact with a woman called Sana Gardezi. They had become acquainted in 2016 and within a period of two months, the two had exchanged some 660 calls.

However, he added that they have yet to conduct a forensic test of the engineer’s emails.

The court directed the police to sit with Mehmood’s wife, Mahera, and make sketches of all those who had abducted him. The court gave the police 30 days to get to the bottom of the matter and adjourned the case until November 26.

Mehmood, who ran a small software firm along with his wife, had been abducted from his house in Sector F-10 on the evening of March 12, 2016, by a group of men in front of his family and neighbours.

His wife had subsequently filed a case in the IHC seeking his recovery. In January 2017, a joint investigation team (JIT) formed to probe his disappearance concluded that Mehmood had probably been a victim of enforced disappearance from the heart of the capital based on eyewitness accounts and the lack of any evidence to suggest otherwise.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 24^th, 2018.