PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday adjourned the hearing into the dumping of bodies case for indefinite period due to the Supreme Court restriction on suo motu powers.

Last year, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Constitution didn’t allow the chief justices of the high courts to take notice of any matter on their own.

A bench comprising Chief Justice Mian Fasihul Mulk and Justice Malik Manzoor Hussain ordered the clubbing of the case with other suo motu cases, whose hearings were adjourned sine die after the Supreme Court restriction.

Former PHC chief justice Dost Mohammad Khan, who was recently elevated to the Supreme Court, had taken a suo motu notice of the dumping of 26 bodies in different areas of the province in Aug 2012 after the human rights cell of the court had referred newspaper reports about it to him.

Thereafter, several other bodies were dumped in different areas with many of them found to be of missing persons.

During the last hearing on Dec 18, a bench had ruled that the dumping of bodies in parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and tribal areas amounted to extra judicial killings and the government should pay compensation to legal heirs of deceased persons as it had failed to protect their lives.

Initially, the local police had submitted a report wherein it had claimed that most of the deceased were militants. However, the court had rejected that report and ordered re-investigation as the investigation officers had not tried to trace the killers.In previous hearing another confidential report of the Peshawar capital city police officer was submitted to the court and the bench after going through the report had sealed it.

The bench had also issued fresh notices to the attorney general for Pakistan, federal secretaries of defense, interior and establishment, provincial home secretary, capital city police chief and others.

The bench had observed that it was the responsibility of government to trace persons involved in extra judicial killing.

When the bench took up for hearing the case on Tuesday, Chief Justice Mian Fasihul Mulk observed that due to a ruling given by the Supreme Court in the MNA Imran Khattak case, the bench could not hear the case as the notice was taken by the chief justice suo motu.The bench observed that it would be appropriate to adjourn its hearing.

The Supreme Court had issued the order on Sept 17 in a civil petition for leave to appeal against a judgment of the PHC by a contesting candidate in the by-elections, Dr Imran Khattak. A three-member bench of the Supreme Court had set aside an order of the PHC regarding re-polling in several female polling stations in two National Assembly constituencies.

The PHC chief justice had taken notice of the issue on Aug 22, the day of by-elections in several constituencies after women were barred from voting in the said two constituencies.

Also in the day, the bench disposed of a writ petition field by father of a missing person, whose body was found dumped along a road in Mansehra.

Petitioner Qazi Fazal Ahmad had initially filed a habeas corpus petition challenging the alleged illegal detention of his son, Qazi Baseer Ahmad.

He alleged that his son was picked up by the Elite Force of police on Jul 15, 2011, from his residence in Speen Khak area of Nowshera, while another boy, Shahid Afridi, was also picked up from a nearby seminary.

The petitioner said later on, Shahid Afridi was set free and that he had also recorded his statement before the high court, but his son remained missing.

While the said petition was pending, the petitioner stated that on Oct 9, 2012, they received information that somebody had dumped the dead body of the detainee at a deserted place at Lasan Nawab in Mansehra district.

Additional Advocate General Mian Arshad Jan informed the bench that on the order of the high court, FIR of the murder was registered at Lassan Nawab police station in Mansehra, wherein three police officials were accused by the petitioner of committing the crime.