Information asymmetry: PHC declares missing persons report ‘insufficient’

Orders other reports for comprehensive review about detainees.

PESHAWAR:

Declaring the report about 16 ‘missing’ persons shifted to various internment centres of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) ‘insufficient’, the Peshawar High Court (PHC) ordered the government on Thursday to produce different reports regarding all petitions of enforced disappearances.

The division bench comprising Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Malik Manzoor Hussain was hearing a total of 353 petitions of enforced disappearances, in which the relatives of petitioners were picked up from various locations.

Deputy Attorney General Manzoor Khalil and Farooq Shah, who were representing the federal government, produced a report on 16 persons who were shifted to notified internment centres. Those detained at the building of Pak-Austrian Institute of Tourism and Hotel Management – now being used as an internment centre – include Saifullah, Jan Muhammad, Wajid Ali and Abdul Majeed. Rashid, Muhammad Mehtab, Qadar Shah, Asghar Shah, Khaliq Niaz, Mian Akhtar Ali, Qudrat Ali, Mian Anwer Ali, Inamullah and Mohammad Abid who are detained in Lakki Marwat, while Bilal is in Kohat and Qaiser Khan is at Malakand internment centre.

CJ Mazhar Alam Miankhel said that they wanted to speed up these cases since they have been pending for years, but the report presented is ‘insufficient’. The government was directed to provide various types of reports regarding the cases, so that the relatives of missing persons waiting outside the courtroom could know of any progress.

“Simply placing missing persons at internment centres is not enough,” said CJ Miankhel. “There should be a comprehensive report regarding the detainees.”

The first report should be regarding the arrest of the individual, their transfer to the centre and the progress in their case, while the second should be related to the natural and extrajudicial deaths of detainees at internment centres. A report was also ordered to be submitted relating to those who have been released from the centres. Similarly, a report is required regarding those officials against whom any FIR is registered and one regarding those missing persons who are not in custody of the government must be submitted, along with an affidavit.

The bench was informed that Asif was picked up and on the orders of the Supreme Court, an FIR was registered against Colonel Dilawar, Captain Danish and Major Shakoor of 47 Battalion in Rahimabad police station, Swat on August 25 2013 under section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code. The court then disposed of the petition.

The court was also informed that Nisar Ali, brother of petitioner Rehmanullah, was picked up by Charsadda police on October 25, 2013 while he was on his way to meet his brother, and then handed over to the army. The court issued a notice to the in-charge at Military Intelligence Peshawar and anti-terrorism squad to submit their reports in the case.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 18^th, 2014.