Enforced disappearances: SHC issues notices seeking whereabouts of ‘missing persons’

Three NGO workers were kidnapped allegedly by law enforcers.

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has issued notices to the federal and provincial authorities to file their comments on the whereabouts of three missing employees of a non-government organisation, besides others.

Headed by Justice Sajjad Ali Shah, the bench asked the deputy attorney general, the provincial advocate general and prosecutor general to file replies of the relevant authorities within two weeks.

The petitioner, Alam Gul, had approached the court seeking the whereabouts of his brother and two other relatives. He submitted that Muhammad Khan, Alam Khan and Rehmat Ali were performing their duties as watchmen at the office of the Production Humanity Welfare Organisation in Pakhtoonabad, Manghopir, when they were kidnapped.

Gul told the court that unknown men in two cars, bearing registration numbers ABA-410 and AGA-210, had forcibly driven the three men away to an unknown place.

"The petitioner contacted the Manghopir police station to register a case, but the officials on duty refused to entertain the plea," his lawyer, Akbar A Channar, told the two judges. He argued that their detention was a violation of their rights to life and liberty guaranteed in the Constitution.

The court was pleaded to issue warrants to search the detainees at the CIA Centre in Karachi under Section 100 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, as their families suspected they were kept in illegal confinement there.

The bench issued notices to the DAG, AG and PG for January 14 to file their comments.

Missing education employee

Another petitioner, Noorun Nisa, alleged that on December 29, Rangers personnel had taken away her 35-year-old son, Muhammad Salman, from the office of the District Education Officer, Karachi, where he was employed. The whereabouts of the detainee were still unknown, she said. The bench issued notices to the DAG, AG and PG to file their comments by January 15. Shoaib Sheikh, another petitioner, said that personnel of law enforcement agencies in plain clothes had picked up his brother, Muhammad Kamran Shah, on December 16 from the limits of Al-Falah police station.

The detainee deals in sale and purchase of used cars and, on the day of the incident, someone had called him in connection with a business deal, he added.

Zeenat Begum, a resident of Liaquatabad's A-Area, alleged that the Rangers personnel had called her 43-year-old son, Faisal Khursheed, for verification of his arms licence at the headquarters of Bhittai Wing-84, on December 26.

She said that Rangers troopers had also arrested him on October 11 and released him after 10 days, but confiscated the weapons.

She said the Mobina Town police were not registering the case regarding the detention of her son, whose life may be in danger and pleaded the court to order the police and Rangers' chiefs to produce him in the court of law.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4^th, 2015.