KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Tuesday directed the secretaries of the ministries of interior and defence to collect reports from all the internment centres located across the country in the cases of missing persons.
While hearing a set of identical petitions, a two-judge bench headed by Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto further asked both the ministries to also get reports from the agencies working under their control in respect of missing persons and file all such reports before it till the next hearing.
It also directed the police to use modern devices to locate and recover missing persons and ordered to repeat sessions of joint investigation team (JIT) and provincial taskforce (PTF) for missing persons before next hearing.
The bench deplored that most of the cases were discussed before the JIT and PTF for several times, but still police were clueless to trace the whereabouts of these missing persons and the investigating officers were filing stereotypical reports.
At the last hearing, the bench had directed a provincial law officer to look into some petitions, where missing persons were declared as enforced disappearances, to provide financial assistance to the families of such persons.
A representative of home department informed the court that this issue will be considered in the next session of PTF scheduled to be held in the first week of next month.
Published in Dawn, August 23th, 2023