PESHAWAR, April 17: The Peshawar High Court on Tuesday summoned the top Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata officials to appear on May 16 and explain their position on growing missing person cases in their respective areas.

It also ordered production of missing persons in the court to ease their families’ misery.

The summons and orders were issued by a bench comprising Chief Justice Dost Mohammad Khan and Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth during the hearing into several missing person cases.

The bench observed that people of different age groups, including women and children, had regularly been appearing before it crying against illegal detention of their family members so it was left with no option but to direct the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chief and home secretaries, PPO and capital city police chief to appear in person in these cases. It said these officials were also asked to submit written replies explaining why they had failed to perform their constitutional obligation to protect life and liberty of citizens and why the administration and police had been concealing facts from the court.

The bench said the officials in question were to produce missing persons before it otherwise they would be held responsible for the misery of the affected families.

It also observed that in almost all missing person cases, intelligence agencies had never been conceding detention of these missing persons and that police, too, hadn’t been divulging facts about disappearances of people.

Of the cases heard by the bench, one is based on a petition filed by Momin Khan, a resident of Umerzai village in Charsadda, who challenged the alleged illegal detention of his son, Sajidullah, for the last over nine months.

Umerzai and Sro Kalae police have denied arrest of Sajidullah, while the defence and interior ministry have expressed ignorance about his whereabouts.

Another case is about the disappearance of lawyer Aurangzeb Khan, who, as his brother, claimed, was taken away by security forces at a military checkpost near Gora Qabristan on July 14, 2011 and has been missing since. Officials of Elite Force deny the arrest.

Another case is about Yahya Khan, a resident of Peshawar’s Umeedabad area, who, according to his father, was picked up by Pishtakhara police on September 19, 2011, before being illegally handed over to Mehsud Scouts but had yet to be freed.

Meanwhile, the bench ordered registration of a case of kidnapping of a Nowshera missing person.

Mubarak Shah, according to her mother, has been in the illegal custody of security agencies since May 2011.