Missing in Pakistan: Mother of Indian national pleads for Modi’s help
Man crossed into Pakistan and checked into Kohat hotel with fake NIC
The mother of an Indian national who has been missing in Pakistan has sought Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s intervention in the case, according to the Times of India (ToI) newspaper.
Nehal Hamid is a resident of India and had left for Afghanistan on November 4, 2012 with a 90-day tourist visa with hopes of bagging a job in the aviation sector. He stayed in touch with his family for a week before he disappeared, possibly in Kohat city of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where he reserved a hotel room using a fake National Identity Card.
Advocate Shakil Asif, the lawyer hired by Hamid’s mother Fauzia Ansari told the Peshawar High Court division bench last week that a joint investigation team (JIT) has completed its report on Hamid. The JIT found that a man going by the name of Hamza reserved a room for one night for Rs300 in Palwasha Hotel located near the Kohat bus stand. He showed that he was a resident of Islamabad.
During questioning, the owner and manager of Palwasha Hotel revealed the man claiming to be Hamza left his room sometime after midnight. Asif said that according to the investigation officer, Nehal Hamid was picked up by a police squad and his whereabouts remained unknown since.
“I plead before you with tears in my eyes and a bleeding heart to locate my son,” Fauzia Ansari said in her letter to Modi. She claims Hamid crossed over from Afghanistan into Pakistan to rescue a woman who was being married against her will, ToI reported on Saturday.
She added that a friend of Nehal’s, Ataur Rehman, put him up at the hotel in Kohat. Ansari is currently in New Delhi, seeking a visa to visit Pakistan, and says she may approach the Supreme Court there for help.
“This case is not in our notice but we can give our response within a few days,” Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said. She added that the Foreign Office was pursuing a similar case with the Indian authorities and normally investigations were carried out in case the person in question was missing.
After Nehal went missing, the Ansaris lodged a police complaint with the Versova police station in Andheri West, Mumbai, and also contacted the Afghan consulate in their city. The petitioner also sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014.
In April, the commission directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs Department to form a joint investigation team to trace Nehal. An FIR was subsequently lodged at the City police station in Karak district under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code. (With additional reporting by our correspondent in Islamabad)
Published in The Express Tribune, September 21st, 2014.
Nehal Hamid is a resident of India and had left for Afghanistan on November 4, 2012 with a 90-day tourist visa with hopes of bagging a job in the aviation sector. He stayed in touch with his family for a week before he disappeared, possibly in Kohat city of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where he reserved a hotel room using a fake National Identity Card.
Advocate Shakil Asif, the lawyer hired by Hamid’s mother Fauzia Ansari told the Peshawar High Court division bench last week that a joint investigation team (JIT) has completed its report on Hamid. The JIT found that a man going by the name of Hamza reserved a room for one night for Rs300 in Palwasha Hotel located near the Kohat bus stand. He showed that he was a resident of Islamabad.
During questioning, the owner and manager of Palwasha Hotel revealed the man claiming to be Hamza left his room sometime after midnight. Asif said that according to the investigation officer, Nehal Hamid was picked up by a police squad and his whereabouts remained unknown since.
“I plead before you with tears in my eyes and a bleeding heart to locate my son,” Fauzia Ansari said in her letter to Modi. She claims Hamid crossed over from Afghanistan into Pakistan to rescue a woman who was being married against her will, ToI reported on Saturday.
She added that a friend of Nehal’s, Ataur Rehman, put him up at the hotel in Kohat. Ansari is currently in New Delhi, seeking a visa to visit Pakistan, and says she may approach the Supreme Court there for help.
“This case is not in our notice but we can give our response within a few days,” Pakistan’s Foreign Office spokesperson Tasneem Aslam said. She added that the Foreign Office was pursuing a similar case with the Indian authorities and normally investigations were carried out in case the person in question was missing.
After Nehal went missing, the Ansaris lodged a police complaint with the Versova police station in Andheri West, Mumbai, and also contacted the Afghan consulate in their city. The petitioner also sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, which forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014.
In April, the commission directed the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Home and Tribal Affairs Department to form a joint investigation team to trace Nehal. An FIR was subsequently lodged at the City police station in Karak district under Section 365 of the Pakistan Penal Code. (With additional reporting by our correspondent in Islamabad)
Published in The Express Tribune, September 21st, 2014.