Pak SC warns police, spy agencies over increasing ‘illegal disappearances’

ISLAMABAD - Pakistan’s Supreme Court has observed that the country’s law-enforcement agencies have been flagrantly violating the court orders despite repeated warnings.

“The complaints of missing citizens instead of decreasing have increased, therefore it needed to be checked,” The Nation quoted a three-member bench of the apex court, as saying.

The court observed that all the State functionaries, agencies and government officers were subject to the law and Constitution, and that they were supposed to act only in accordance with the law and command of the Constitution.

“Violations whereof may entail legal consequences if the mandate of the law is not adhered to strictly,” it added.

The Supreme Court directed its office to sit with the Attorney General office’s staff and prepare a separate list of cases “showing connection of police and spy agencies” regarding the complaints of picking up of citizens by law-enforcement agencies, so that an ‘appropriate legal order against the responsible officers could be ordered’ in order to proceed against them under the criminal law.

During the proceedings, Justice Raja Fayyaz observed that the federal government seemed to be helpless and had no control over the spy agencies, while Justice Khosa said the issue of missing persons had become very sensitive in Balochistan, as the intelligence agencies’ officials were thinking that they were securing Pakistan through lifting people, but in fact they were damaging the country.

The court observed that according to the Judicial Commission’s report, 290 missing persons were traced, out of which 78 were recovered from the agencies.

‘Nobody is above the law and due to illegal disappearances we are heading towards anarchy’, said Justice Fayyaz. (ANI)