Daily Times

KARACHI: While taking exception to the indifference of cellular companies to provide cell phone data in missing persons’ cases, the Sindh High Court has issued notices to cellular companies to submit their explanation.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Muhammad Shafi Siddiqui directed the mobile companies to send their representatives to the court to appraise it of why required data was not being provided to investigating officers in missing persons.

It also directed the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority’s official, whose role was to establish a better liaison between the companies operating in the province and the police, to appear before it.

These directions were issued by the bench while hearing a petition seeking whereabouts of missing rickshaw driver.

The judges expressed displeasure over the cellular companies for not timely responding to the requests of investigation officers for provision cell phone data. They observed that a letter was written to the cellular companies on April 05 but they failed to answer.

However, the court said, since the police may not have been responded to by all those telephone network companies they deemed it appropriate to summon their representative on the next date so that information immediately required for the purpose of investigation be provided to them.

The court also took notice of the companies’ belated response saying that call data of at least three months is required, however, delayed response risk losing chance of locating whereabouts of missing men.

At the outset, incharge DIG East Zone complained to the judges that when approached, the companies refused to share any call data of the missing rickshaw driver which was violation of the high court earlier order that directed them to cooperate with investigating officers.

Petitioner Abdul Hameed had submitted that his brother Abdul Rehman was missing since Dec 15 as there was no clue to them since then. The law enforcement agencies had failed to recover him after passage of considerable time, he added while pleading the judges to issue directives to them to make sincere efforts to trace him.

Meanwhile, another bench referred a petition of Pakistan People’s Party’s lawmaker Sharmila Farooqi to the SHC chief justice to constitute a special bench for disposal of the case.

Farooqi had approached the court against the National Accountability Bureau for asking the Election Commission of Pakistan and the Sindh Assembly to disqualify her for having been convicted by a court.

At the outset, her lawyer informed the judges that the bench comprising Justice Muhammad Farooq Shah and KK Agha had heard arguments at length. Therefore, the matter ought to be referred to the same bench for early disposal of the petition.

Sharmila Farooqi through her lawyer had submitted that NAB had filed a reference against her father, who was former Steel Mills chairman, mother and her for investing a huge amount in national saving schemes which did not commensurate with their known sources of income. However, they later entered into a plea bargain with the NAB which was allowed by the relevant court in 2001.

She said that in 2016, the NAB had written to the ECP, the State Bank of Pakistan and others calling for her disqualification under the Section 15 of the Ordinance.

In response to the court notice, the NAB prosecutor had filed comments, submitting that Farooqui cannot hold any public office since she has been convicted by a court of law. “Letters to the Sindh Assembly and the ECP seeking her disqualification were written strictly in accordance with the law.

Subsequently, her counsel filed a rejoinder contending that under Section 9 and 17 of the Ehtesab Act, there is no disqualification for a person holding public office after he or she has entered into plea bargain.

“Under no circumstances, Section 15 of the National Accountability Ordinance 1999, which provides that a person stands disqualified for holding public office for 21 years after having been convicted by a court cannot be applied in her client’s case,” he argued.