Federal, provincial law officers put on notice

The Sindh High Court issued notices to the federal and provincial law officers on Saturday on petitions against the alleged illegal detention of citizens by the law-enforcement agencies.

Petitioners Maryum Khatoon, Mehmooda Khatoon, Hafizullah, Sobia Asif and Zeenat Sehar submitted in the petitions that law-enforcement personnel picked up their relatives Yasin, Naveed Kamal, Mohammad Azizullah, Mirza Ahmed Sarfaraz, Mohammad Asif Khan and Malik Tauqeer Khalid from Korangi, Gadap Town, Jamshed road, Buffer Zone and Gulistan-e-Jauhar. Police were neither disclosing the whereabouts of the detained men, nor providing details of the cases against them.

They petitioners feared for the lives of their loved ones and requested the court to direct police and government agencies to produce them before a court and provide the details of cases, if any, against them.

The court directed the federal and provincial law officers and the law-enforcement agencies to file their comments on the efforts being made to find the missing men.

In another detention case, that of Azhar Iqbal who is missing since May 7, 2011, the court directed police to submit a progress report for the efforts to find him.

Petitioner Zia Iqbal submitted that his brother Azhar Iqbal was taken away from Gulshan-e-Kaneez Fatima in Karachi and since then his whereabouts were unknown.

The court was informed that a provincial task force on missing person had conducted an investigation and its report would be submitted soon.

The SHC had earlier expressed its dissatisfaction over the performance of the provincial task force and joint investigation teams formed to investigate missing person cases. It had observed that both had failed to trace the people who were either missing or allegedly taken away by the law-enforcement agencies.

The court observed that the home department, police and others concerned should make concrete and result-oriented efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing people.