Lal Masjid case: Police trace three ‘missing’ persons

Two sisters among those located, said to be living with their husbands.

ISLAMABAD:

A man and two sisters listed as missing following the 2007 Lal Masjid military operation have been traced by the Aabpara police. Applications for their retrieval had been pending for the past four years. 

The sisters — Sidra and Nargis — who went ‘missing’ from Jamia Hafsa, are said to be living with their husbands. Their marriages were arranged by the Jamia Hafsa management.

The man, Walliullah, was a student of Jamia Faridiya and also went missing after the operation. However, his family, when contacted by the police recently, confirmed that he returned home last year, said a police official.

Regarding the two sisters, the police official said they came to take seek refuge at the seminary after developing differences with their father.

“Jamia Hafsa used to provide refuge to such women and also arranged their marriages,” said the police official.

Their father, unaware of their whereabouts, filed an application with the police. However, after the operation, the two girls went to live with their husbands.

The madrassa management refused to divulge the identities and whereabouts of their husbands. The chief cleric of Lal Masjid, Maulana Abdul Aziz, confirmed to the Islamabad deputy commissioner that Sidra and Nargis were well and with their husbands, police said.

The seminary management said the girls did not want their father to know where they were living, said another police official who was part of the recent investigations.

Quoting a Jamia Hafsa cleric, he said that the girls levelled allegations of “serious nature” against their father and vowed never to see him again.

The investigation officer had failed to update the status of the sisters, who were considered missing until now. When contacted recently, Maulana Aziz and other seminary officials reconfirmed that the women were married and were living with their husbands.

Similarly, Walliullah’s family filed an application with the police after his name wasn’t found in the bodies recovered from the mosque.

“But they (his family) did not update the police upon his return,” said the police official, adding that they only confirmed when they were contacted recently. They also refused to provide any details on where he had spent the past three years.

Regarding Maulana Aziz’s mother, the police official said she could not be found in her native town of Rajhan in Dera Ghazi Khan. The police believed earlier that she might have escaped the operation and died in her native village and was buried there.

“During recent investigations, no one confirmed that she left the mosque with Maulana Aziz or if she was spotted in Rajhan,” said the police officer.

“There were 16 bodies that could not be identified during the Lal Masjid operation and it is possible that she could be one of them,” he added. The bodies, he said, will be identified with the help of DNA tests.

Meanwhile the police submitted a compliance report to the Supreme Court on Wednesday. The police have so far registered cases of eight missing persons on the orders of the Supreme Court.

Published In The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2012.