Roll up your sleeves: PHC strives to give enforced disappearances due attention

Incoming chief justice resolves to put strong pressure on govt to take action.

PESHAWAR:

In the last four hearings of missing persons at the Peshawar High Court (PHC), the bench heard all petitions collectively as families waited outside the courtroom, anxiously waiting to hear some good news about their loved ones.

The PHC, however, has now decided to hear each petition separately. This will, by no means, be an easy feat as there are around 500 petitions relating to enforced disappearances from the province and Fata still pending before the high court.

With just over a week left for Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel to take oath as PHC Chief Justice (CJ) on April 8, the senior judge has resolved to put pressure on the government to do whatever is possible for the solution of missing persons’ cases.

During the last hearing on March 25, it took around four hours to hear the cases of 51 petitioners of enforced disappearances and, unlike before, family members of the missing persons were allowed to enter the courtroom one by one. Government officials and security agencies were directed in front of the families to take appropriate steps for the trials of all people in their custody.

However, in many hearings, a partial list of missing persons was provided to the court, while hundreds of others remained untouched, resulting in the families leaving the court without any progress on their respective cases.

In most previous hearings, the government presented their reports in which they informed the court that a number of missing persons had been traced to various internment centres and that further search was in progress.

The federal government has been directed many times to produce a report on missing persons but it has failed to comply with the court order despite a lapse of more than five months.

The division bench of Justice Mazhar Alam and Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan showed displeasure over the federal government’s delay in submitting the inquiry reports. In the previous hearing the court also ordered the General Headquarters of Pakistan Army to produce an inquiry report of a missing person by the next date of hearing.

“This new pattern started by Justice Mazhar Alam will bring good news for the families of missing persons and will pressurise the government to take serious action,” former Deputy Attorney General Muhammad Iqbal Mohmand told The Express Tribune. “Cases of this kind need the full attention and time of the court.”

Mohmand added that Justice Alam has great experience in dealing with missing persons’ cases, because he has conducted many hearings in the past in the division bench of former CJ Ijaz Afzal Khan.

“If the court issues strict orders to the government by hearing all petitions one by one and follows up on the cases, I am sure many families will get good news about their loved ones very soon,” said the brother of a missing person, Sarfaraz Khan.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 30^th, 2014.