Enforced disappearances: Police clear up eight of 10 cases

The commission focused on JSMM activists.

KARACHI: The judicial commission on enforced disappearances took up another batch of ten cases on its third day, Wednesday.

Most of these cases were of Jeay Sindh Muttahida Mohaz (JSMM), a nationalist party. Meanwhile, the police informed the commission on the whereabouts of seven of these 10 ‘missing persons’. Cases of the disappearance of Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) activists, which total 25, will be taken up today.

The commission has until March 3 to look into 54 enforced disappearances from the province.

Police told the commission, which meets at the Pak Secretariat, about the recovery of  Jam Qarar Din, Ali Nawaz Maher, Shahnawaz and Riaz Ali, who are all JSMM members. They went ‘missing’ from the Empress market area, within the jurisdiction of Brigade police, on April 11 last year.

The other ‘missing persons’ whose whereabouts are now known include Ghulam Murtaza, Sajjad Hussain and Bashir Asif. Murtaza had disappeared from Larkana, Hussain from Sohrab Goth and Asif from Jamshoro. They were not affiliated with any political party.

The commission asked the police to submit a report about the disappearance of JSMM general secretary, Muzaffar Bhutto, within 15 days, and transferred the case of Hakim Ali to Muzzafargarh. While discussing the disappearance of Imran Jhokio from rural Sindh, police said that he was killed in Mitiari and two suspects were arrested, though Jokhio’s body has not been found yet.

Ali and Jokhio’s families attended the proceedings on Wednesday, while Bhutto’s relatives did not. “We are fairly hopeful about Hakim after witnessing the recovery of all these people in the last two days,” said Fazal Ali, a relative. “If he is still alive, then it’s the police’s responsibility to deliver him to us.”

Police had already cleared the mystery behind three of the 54 cases on the commission’s first day of hearing.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 1^st, 2012.