ISLAMABAD: Following a melee at the protest by the Defence of Human Rights (DHR) against enforced disappearances, Dawn has learnt that more and more people are turning up missing in central Punjab.

Missing persons from this region are a relatively new phenomenon. In the past, most enforced disappearances in the province were reported from the areas of south Punjab.

Javed Salman, a well-dressed rice trader from Sialkot, showed up to the protest along with his wife and children. "I'm here because more than one of my friends have been picked up without a trace," he said.

"Over the past year or so, people have begun to go missing from central Punjab. Up until a couple of years ago, such disappearances were limited to the south of the province," said DHR's Mohammad Kamran.

At Tuesday's sit-in, people from cities such as Sialkot, Faisalabad and Lahore dominated the protest camp. But this is not all they had in common.

Mufti Kifayatullah, the Sialkot nazim for Markazi Jamiat Ahle Hadith (MJAH), told Dawn, "Seven of our people have gone missing in the past year."

Several protesters said they were followers of Hafiz Abdul Jabbar Shakir of Sialkot, who is a disciple of the Sajid Mir group within the MJAH.

At least seven members of MJAH have been picked up over the past year. These include one man from Faisalabad and three each from Lahore and Sialkot.

Kifayatullah added, "Even Hafiz Shakir was picked up by men in plainclothes in January of this year". "I used to attend (Shakir's) sermons and pray with him whenever he came to Faisalabad. It is deplorable that no one seems to know his whereabouts," said Sheikh Farhan, a trader from Faisalabad. He said he had personally asked local law enforcement officials about the religious leader's disappearance, "But they said this has nothing to do with the police".

Though MJAH is not active in the political sphere, according to Kifayatullah, many recent members - including Hafiz Shakir himself - were formerly associated with the Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD).

Others within the community suspect rival groups from their school of thought of being involved in these disappearances. Hafiz Muzammil, a businessman from Sialkot, told Dawn, "Some old friends were not pleased when Hafiz Shakir took his 700 or so followers and joined MJAH".

There are three main groups within the Ahle Hadith school of thought. The largest one is JuD, led by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed. JuD was allegedly formed by former members of the proscribed Lashkar-i-Tayyaba (LeT), one of the key jihadi groups that took part in the incursions into Kashmir and Afghanistan. Members of the MJAH are numerous, but are primarily preoccupied with preaching. The third group within this sect is the Jamiat Ahle Hadith, led by Ibtisam Elahi Zaheer, son of Ehsan Elahi Zaheer. This group does not have a very large following.

According to law-enforcement sources, members of the Ahle Hadith are not usually involved in terrorism or militancy, making their presence at the DHR sit-in hard to explain.

However, an Islamabad-based intelligence official acknowledged that while most of these groups had 'clean records', certain reports had surfaced recently, implicating a few members of the Ahle Hadith.

"All law enforcement agencies, including the police and other departments are keeping a close eye on their activities and monitoring selected individuals," he added.

Ayesha Siddiqa, a security analyst who has also studied banned organisations, said that violent individuals often changed loyalties and hopped across right-wing and religious organisations.

"Retired Maj Gen Faisal Alvi was killed by a former member of the LeT who had jumped ship to another organisation," she pointed out, adding that LeT did not historically attack the state or its representatives.

Alvi had supervised the 2004 Angoor Adda operation and became a target for militants.

DHR officials point out that those whose loved ones have gone missing tend to participate actively in such protests, but over time, they lose hope and stop showing up.