KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Wednesday expressed resentment over the process of investigation in a case of missing children and directed a DIG to appear in court on March 8.

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Naimatullah Phulpoto also directed the SSPs of Khairpur and Jacobabad to recover a minor girl, said to be in the custody of an absconder, till next date.

When a petition, filed in 2012 about missing children, came up for hearing, SSP of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) submitted a progress report on behalf of the DIG-CIA who is supervising the investigation.

The govt is implementing SC order by moving Omar Sheikh to a rest house, says law officer

The police submitted in the report that in compliance with earlier orders of the bench, all the SSPs and investigating officers were directed to continue their best efforts to recover remaining 14 missing children and use modern technologies to trace them.

It further maintained that there was a clue regarding the whereabouts of a missing girl and she was being detained by an absconder in a criminal case, namely Shahid, in Khairpur.

The bench observed that the petition was filed in 2012 and the liberty of the girl in question was supreme as guaranteed in the Constitution, but it was very unfortunate that the IO of the case was on a 10-day leave and the investigation had not been handed over to any other IO.

Keeping in view the sensitivity of the matter, the bench directed the DIG to appear in person on the next date of hearing and also asked both the SSPs to recover the girl till the next date and attend court proceedings along with a progress report.

The petition was filed by a non-governmental organisation seeking court directives to the provincial police for considering the cases of those children who went missing from different parts of Karachi and registering FIRs in this regard as well as proper investigation.

The NGO alleged that cases of missing children were not properly investigated by the police, which resulted in many avoidable deaths.

Earlier, on a directive of the SHC, the police had lodged 23 FIRs regarding missing children at different police stations of the city. Later, nine of them had returned home.

Omar Sheikh being moved to rest house

A provincial law officer on Wednesday informed the same bench that arrangements were being made to shift Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, commonly known as Omar Sheikh, the principal accused in the murder case of US journalist Daniel Pearl, from jail to a rest house in compliance with a recent order of the Supreme Court.

Mr Sheikh and three others moved SHC seeking contempt proceedings against the provincial and jail authorities for not releasing them despite the fact that their conviction order was set aside in the abduction and murder case of the American journalist.

At the outset of the hearing, an assistant advocate general placed before the SHC a copy of the apex court order issued on Feb 2 to move Sheikh out of the death cell to a residential environment like a government rest house and submitted that the provincial authorities were making arrangements to implement the order in letter and spirit.

The bench adjourned the hearing till Feb 16 and said that the attendance of home secretary was dispensed with till further orders and directed the remaining alleged contemnors to be in attendance on the next hearing.

The petitioners submitted that the SHC had set aside the trial court’s conviction order in April last year and in December the high court had also declared the preventive detention orders of the provincial government illegal and ordered jail authorities to release them, but they were still being kept behind bars.

Published in Dawn, February 4th, 2021