Missing: Four months on, no sign of abducted man

POF official was picked up without an arrest warrant.

WAH:

When Zafar Iqbal came home after performing his duties on April 28, Field Intelligence Unit (FIU) officials in civil clothes raided his house and beat him brutally before dragging him away in a Rescue 15 mobile.

Since then his family has approached senior officers for help and lodged a number of complaints about Iqbal’s abduction, but they have been unable to find a clue even after four weeks. His son succeeded in registering a case with Wah Cantonment Police against the FIU under section 365 more than two weeks after the incident.

The officials ransacked the house and took away the family’s computer and a briefcase containing matrimonial and educational certificates and identity documents. What riles Iqbal’s son, Tauseef, is that the FIU officials could not produce an arrest warrant, nor were they accompanied by women police as mandated by law.

“When they entered our home, I tried to ask the reason, and assured them of our cooperation,” said Tauseef, while talking to The Express Tribune. “But they did not listen to a single word and behaved aggressively towards my mother and two sisters.” My younger sister was taking her BA exams, while the youngest was sitting for her FA exams, and bother their enrolment slips were also in that briefcase, he added.

The family made numerous trips to the FIU office in Wah Cantonment, station headquarters and the Pakistan Ordinance Factories (POF). Security officials have constantly denied picking him up and the family has been unable to establish contact with Iqbal.

The condition of Iqbal’s wife, who is in constant need of medication and has been periodically undergoing treatment at the POF Hospital for the past 25 years, is getting critical with each passing day. Despite 35 years of service, POF has taken no steps to trace their employee or provide his family assistance. His family cannot draw his pay for which they need an authority letter, but they do not even know where to find him.

“We have been reduced to living from hand to mouth since our father’s salary is our only source of income. For God sake help us!” Tauseef appealed to POF officials.

He said he went to meet the POF chairman along with his mother and sisters on May 5, but the staff at the POF hall did not allow them to see him. He said POF officials even refused to take the application and threatened him to back off from the case or he too would go missing.

“Can anybody give me the assurance that my father will safely return from illegal custody? There is a strong possibility that his abductors subject him to torture, which is a constant source of torment for me and my family,” said Tauseef. To verify the application my mother submitted to the POF chairman on May 5, we received a call from 051-905521027, after which there has been no progress in this case, he said.

The second time he took his visually-impaired, wheelchair-bound grandmother so that he could tell the POF chairman that his mother and grandmother were in critical condition, and request him to release his father.

“We could not meet the chairman, but officials hurled the same threats at us. FIU officials manhandled my sisters, mother and grandmother and whisked them to the police station in the same Rescue 15 mobile in which they had kidnapped my father,” he alleged.

When contacted, Chairman POF and POF Board Lt. Gen. Muhammad Ahsan Mehmood said the case was not in his knowledge. When pointed out that an FIR has been police registered in this regard, he said, “If an FIR has been registered then one should consult the report instead of talking to me.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 30^th, 2012.