Summons: Interior secretary called to help remove bureaucratic snag

SHC summoned him to sort out a dozen petitions of people who went missing after they were taken into custody.

KARACHI:

A divisional bench of the Sindh High Court (SHC) summoned the federal interior secretary to help the court sort out a dozen identical petitions filed by the family of people who went missing after they were taken into custody by the law enforcement agencies.

The bench comprised Chief Justice Mushir Alam and Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi and they were listening to petitions by Phullan Khatoon, Gulfam Bibi and other petitioners against the alleged illegal detention of their family members. Some of them were taken into custody in 2010 and have not been presented to the court to date and their families don’t know where they are.

A representative of the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) said that telephone data can be shared with the court under the existing policy. He also said that a mechanism should be formulated by the government so that data can be handed over to the government.  The bench observed that the bureaucracy is resorting to delaying tactics while people are grow increasingly concerned about the illegal confinement of citizens by the law enforcement agencies that are apparently unable to control the crime rate.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 17^th,  2011.