A journalist was picked up on Monday by "men in plain clothes" after he attended a condolence meeting for the recently-deceased intellectual Dr Hasan Zafar Arif at the University of Karachi, The Express Tribune reported.

Fawad Hasan, who until recently had been a Tribune staffer, was reportedly investigated for an hour before being released.

"Journalists should not be manhandled," he was quoted as saying by the publication upon his release.

While Hasan himself remained tight-lipped on what he was questioned about during the investigation, another journalist gave out some details on Twitter.

Incidents of enforced disappearances have been reported with an alarming frequency in Pakistan.

In November, the 2017 World Press Freedom Index, placed Pakistan among the most dangerous countries for journalists. Pakistan was ranked 139th out of 180 countries.

On January 10 this month, Islamabad-based journalist Taha Siddiqui was the subject of a failed abduction by "10-12 armed men."

That incident came roughly two months after The News reporter Ahmed Noorani and his driver were the target of a knife attack by unidentified assailants in Islamabad's Zero Point area.

The 2015 disappearance of Zeenat Shahzadi and her October 2017 recovery is another case in point.

Human rights activists Waqas Goraya, Asim Saeed, Salman Haider and Ahmed Raza Naseer, known on social media for their leftist views, had also gone missing in January 2017 before being released a few weeks later.