Should police need time till 2025 to recover missing persons, observes SHC

KARACHI: The Sindh High Court took an exception to police and joint investigation teams’ performances and observed that JITs were doing nothing to recover more than 60 missing persons.

Hearing petitions for the safe recovery of missing persons, the court observed that despite repeated directives, police officers had not been making any progress in the cases while the correspondence between the investigating officers and senior police officers took months, adding that JIT sessions were apparently not going beyond the photo session. The court inquired an investigation officer as whether he required time till 2025 to recover missing persons.

The home department’s focal person submitted that the provincial task force had held a session for discussing the cases of missing persons and directed the JIT heads and IOs to put in extra efforts to track the detainees and also visit the prisons of Sindh in order to locate them. The court directed the police investigation officers to make serious efforts for the recovery of missing children and submit reports on June 6.

The directives came at a petition filed by a non-governmental organisation in 2012 regarding children who have gone missing from different parts of Karachi. The petitioner contended that police did not properly investigate these cases, which resulted in many avoidable deaths.

A police officer had earlier informed the court that police had recovered eight out of 19 children who disappeared from different parts of the city, and they were returned to their parents. He had said the police would make every effort for recovery of the remaining missing children.

The court also directed the federal and provincial law officers to file their progress report on petitions against detention of citizens allegedly by the personnel of law enforcement agencies.