A Pakistani court has issued notices to the defence and interior ministries asking them to explain their position on the enforced disappearance of an Indian national from the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2012.
A Peshawar High Court bench, during the hearing into a petition against the disappearance, expressed surprise as to how an Indian national had entered Pakistan from Afghanistan without valid documents and reached Kohat, even as the intelligence agencies remained ignorant about it.
The Peshawar High Court yesterday issued separate notices to the defence and interior ministries asking them to explain position on the enforced disappearance of Nehal Hamid Ansari from Kohat district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, in 2012, Dawn News reported.
In the petition, Fauzia Ansari, mother of Nehal, said her son had gone to Afghanistan in November 2012 in search of a job in the aviation industry but afterwards, he entered Pakistan to help a woman in distress in Kohat.
She claimed that her son was the president of the Rotary Club, New Delhi, and had got in contact with the girl by Facebook, a social networking site.
The bench comprising Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Nisar Hussain Khan fixed September 8 for next hearing with the direction that the defence and interior ministries inform the court regarding the whereabouts of the missing man.
Nehal, a 28-year-old MBA degree holder, was reportedly a teacher at the Mumbai Management College.
The petitioner said she believed that her son had stayed at a hotel in Kohat before he went missing.
She said her son was also reportedly in contact with some Pakistani friends, who had advised him to cross into Pakistan without visa.
The petitioner had earlier sent an application to the human rights cell of the Supreme Court, which had forwarded the case to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014.
On April 10, 2014, the commission had directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home department to constitute a joint investigation team to trace Ansari.
On the directives of the commission, an FIR was registered at the city police station in Karak district.
Fauzia last year had approached the Indian Supreme Court seeking a direction to the government to find out the whereabouts of her son.
Agreeing to hear her plea, a bench of justices C K Prasad and Kurian Joseph had asked the Centre to look into the issue.
