Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The Senate functional committee on Human Rights demanded data of enforced disappeared and missing person’s data from the Balochistan government during the last five years. The Senate functional committees on Human Rights meet here in Parliament house under the chair of Senator Nasreen Jalil.

Committee members Farhatullah Babar, Dr. Jahanzeb Jamaldini, Sitara Ayaz, Mufti Abdul Sattar and Sehar Kamran strongly criticised the recent attack on the police training centre and previous attacks in Quetta. Jamaldini of Balochistan National Party, whose son Advocate Sangat was killed in a civil hospital attack on lawyers in August said that his son was alive for almost seven hours after the incident, but due to lack of facilities at the hospital he died. He said the Federal Interior minister himself confessed on the floor of the Senate that there were no leads in the investigation. He said the province was spending almost Rs 30 billion but law and order of the province had not improved yet. He said that the handler of Shikarpur attack Haji Abdul Qadir was openly living in Wud area of the province, but nobody dared to touch him.

The Home Secretary of Balochistan Dr. M Akhtar Harifal rejected the impression that the administration knew about the Police Training Centre attack beforehand. He said that Balochistan was a large province, and despite taking strong measures to tackle law and order situation of the province, lapses could occur. He said that stringent security measures were taken by police and other law enforcement forces and many incidents were prevented from happening.

He said the province had been facing an insurgency for more than a decade. He demanded restoration of earlier powers of the Deputy Commissioner and officials to hold affairs to curtail the menace of terrorism in the province. He demanded “collective powers” so that people like Dr. Allah Nazir, who are at large could be arrested. Senator Babar intervened and said that the Home Minister wanted outdated powers like FCR.

Chairman National Commission on Human Rights (NCHR) Justice (Ret) Ali Nawaz Chochan said he himself visited Quetta after the attack on lawyers and it seemed the pattern of attacks was the same. The Committee asked the Home Secretary to present a detailed report consisting of names of enforced disappeared and missing person names. If any dumped bodies were found, FIRs should be registered and DNA tests conducted.

Chairperson of the committee formed a sub-committee under the convenership of Senator Jamaldini, in which Sitara Ayaz and Sehar Kamran will be its members. The sub-committee will look at standard operating procedure before and after the currents attacks in Quetta and present its report in the committee.

Nasreen Azhar and Tahira Abdullah, Council members of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, briefed the committee regarding the HRCP’s fact findings mission on the abduction of social worker Abdul Wahid Baloch, who disappeared on 26 July 2016.

They said that Baloch was taken by two persons from a highway toll plaza on the outskirts of Karachi while he was travelling from Digre, Mirpur Khas. Two people forcibly stopped the vehicle, then verified with a picture of Abdul Wahid Baloch on their smart phone. He was then taken away on a Toyota Vego.

His family members went to Gadap Police Station to report the incident, however police refused to complete a first information report to register it as a kidnapping case and have not yet launched any investigation. They said that details of Baloch’s case were also sent to the commission on the missing persons, headed by Justice (Retd) Javed Iqbal. The Committee referred the case to NCHR for investigation.