‘Military abduction’: Rawalpindi police given two weeks to trace missing IDP

Petitioner claims her son was detained by police; family being pressed to forfeit 500 kanals in Swat.

RAWALPINDI:

A court on Tuesday granted two weeks to the Rawalpindi police to recover a man allegedly being detained by the Punjab Elite Force for the past six weeks.

Justice Shahid Hameed of the Lahore High Court Rawalpindi bench issued the orders, directing Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Muhammad Shoaib and Station House Officer (SHO) Sadaar Bairuni Sohail Zaffar to trace the whereabouts of the internally displaced person (IDP) of Swat, Muhammad Saleem.

Justice Hameed was hearing a petition filed by the victim’s mother, Mumtaz Begum, a widow, who claims that her 46-year-old son was abducted on the directive of military authorities to press the family to forfeit 500 kanals of agricultural land in Swat. She claims that her son was abducted from his residence in Ghulshanabad, Rawalpindi, by officials of the Punjab Elite Force on the night of February 23.

In the last hearing, SHO Zaffar had denied that the elite force had arrested Saleem and informed the court that the head of Rawalpindi police had formed a joint investigation team to trace the whereabouts of the missing IDP. The court was also told that the matter had been referred to the parliamentary committee on missing persons.

Begum had earlier claimed that her family, along with her late husband Abdul Ghaffar Khan, left their house in Kota Tehsil, Barikot district in Swat, where he used to cultivate around 500 kanals of land, growing peach, apricot and plum. She said that since they were registered as IDPs, they were to go back after the military operation. But we have not been able to go back, since we are being harassed and threatened by military authorities, she said.

In July 2009, she said the army destroyed the orchards and took over the family’s belongings, forcing her husband to move the Peshawar High Court (PHC) against the alleged illegal occupation of the land. The high court decided the case in favour of her husband, but the military authorities did not comply with the ruling, she claimed.

The family then moved the Supreme Court, which too ruled in their favour on January 27. After the court’s ruling, Begum said that the land was handed over to their legal attorney, but military officials present in Swat started harassing them and threatened them not to interfere, as the orchards had been leased by the army to civilian contractors.

The petitioner has urged the LHC to declare the detention of her son unlawful, and direct the authorities to produce him before the court.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 4^th, 2012.