KARACHI: The Senate’s Functional Committee on Human Rights on Friday expressed serious annoyance as director-general of Sindh Rangers and inspector-general of Sindh Police didn’t turn up before the committee.
The committee declared that the federal government would be approached through the Senate chairman to make these officials appear before the functional committee if their no-show persisted for the next two months also.
The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights met with Senator Nasreen Jalil in the chair here at the office of Sindh chief secretary.The functional committee in its meeting decided to send recommendation to the government for the purpose of doing classification of missing persons belonging to Karachi, giving compensation to their family members, to relocate the Central Prison Karachi outside of the city, giving alternate residential plots to affected persons of anti-encroachment
operation at Gujjar Nullah, establishing on immediate basis a medical camp for jail inmates suffering from skin diseases, water filtration plant in jail, and recommendation for constructing new prison facilities in the city.
The meeting took into consideration cases related to the death of Aftab Ahmed who was the coordinator of Dr Farooq Sattar during detention, affected persons of Gujjar Nullah anti-encroachment operation, and complaints related to human rights violations during actions taken by law-enforcement agencies in Karachi.
Senator Nasreen Jalil informed newsmen that members of the functional committee had expressed serious concern over the absence of IG Sindh Police and DG Rangers Sindh who didn’t appear before the committee.
Earlier, the two senior officials heading the law-enforcement agencies had been asked to appear before the committee in Islamabad but they didn’t appear there either. Now a meeting of the committee was held in Karachi but these two officials here also didn’t turn up before it to brief members of the committee.
The meeting of the functional committee was informed that some 313 missing persons belonged to Karachi and 125 of them were activists of MQM. Officials of LEAs who appeared before the committee were asked about the steps taken by them to recover the missing persons on which they responded that cases related to these missing persons were being heard by different courts.
There could be different causes, which led to these persons going missing. Some of these missing men belonged to the MQM while some others could be associated with criminal gangs. Investigations are being done to explore possible leads related to personal, political, and other causes that led these persons to go to unidentified locations.
Members of the functional committee were informed that different law-enforcement agencies had been working in the city while all legal formalities were duly met while detaining or arresting any suspected person. The LEAs obtain proper remand from court to do investigation and interrogation from a suspect taken into custody by the LEAs. All possible efforts are being made to recover any missing person. Certain missing persons had been recovered and information reports regarding their recovery had been submitted to courts and other forums concerned.
The meeting decided that classification of the missing persons who had been missing for the last two years or more would be done, so that it could be used to give compensation to their concerned family members. The law-enforcement agencies were asked about 6,000 persons detained during different operations. The committee members were informed that they were detained under different allegations.
Additional IG Police Mushtaq Mahar informed the meeting some 100 persons had been detained after incidents of violence that occurred in Karachi on August 22, 2016. After proper investigation, those persons who were found involved in committing violence were formally arrested. Others were set free.
The committee was also informed that Central Prison Karachi had the capacity to hold 2,400 jail inmates. However, against this capacity, some 6,500 prisoners were kept at the prison. The situation at the Central Prison in the city is going from bad to worse as all jail inmates related to crimes of target killings, extortion and extremism have been kept at one place.The committee recommended that the Central Prison should be relocated to a place outside the city while six new district level prison facilities should be constructed in Karachi.
