Civil rights campaigner missing in Karachi
KARACHI, June 7: A civil rights campaigner has been missing since Wednesday afternoon. Syed Mohammed Iqbal Kazmi, who recently filed petitions on the May 12 mayhem in Karachi and the new Pemra ordinance, went missing after he dropped his 12-year-old son at the house of his mother-in-law in Gulistan-i-Jauhar.
His wife, Sadia, told Dawn that her husband left their Korangi house at around 3pm in his car to drop their eldest son at the house of her mother. “I called him at around 4:30pm on his cellphone and he told me that he was on way back home.”
She said that since that time she had not heard from him.
She said her husband had received two threatening phone calls. “He (Mr Kazmi) told me that someone had called him twice to tell him that ‘jo quaid ka ghaddar hai wo maut ka haqdar hai’”.
Mrs Kazmi said: “I don’t know if my husband has been kidnapped. I don’t know the names of his abductors. They could be the people who have been made respondents in the petitions,” she said, adding that intelligence agencies could also be involved in the mysterious disappearance.
Town Police Officer of Korangi, Farrukh Bashir, said Mrs Kazmi had reported that her husband had been missing since he left the house of her mother on Wednesday. “Two constables have been deputed at the house of the missing man for security of his family,” he added.
Naheed Afzal, a noted lawyer belonging to Tehrik-i-Insaf, told Dawn that Iqbal Kazmi had made federal Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah, MQM chief Altaf Hussain, Sindh CM’s adviser on home affairs Waseem Akhtar, Chief Secretary Shakeel Durrani, Home Secretary Ghulam M. Muhatram Naqvi, Provincial Police Officer Niaz A. Siddiqui, CCPO Azhar A. Farooqui and other police officials respondents in his petition.