HRCP to form committee to probe students’ disappearances

Terming the recent cases of enforced disappearances in the city a “new wave of abduction of Baloch students”, rights and political activists in a meeting on Friday expressed grave concern over the matter and agreed to form a fact-finding team to probe the disappearances.

Asad Iqbal Butt, vice-chairperson of the Sindh chapter of Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, confirmed this to The News after attending the meeting. The move comes at the heels of the disappearance of two Baloch students of the University of Karachi who were whisked away along with a teenager, who intended to enroll at KU, by masked men in plain clothes in the early hours of Thursday from their houses in Madho Goth, located along University Road.

The three young men whose whereabouts are unknown are: 26-year-old Mumtaz Ahmed, a final-year student at the Department of International Relations, 27-year-old Saifullah, who is pursuing an MPhil at the Department of Agriculture and 17-year-old Kamran Sajid, who recently applied for admission at the university.

While Mumtaz Ahmed and Kamran Sajidi are brothers, it is believed that they do not know Saifullah. Their families and KU officials claimed that the students had no ties with any banned organisation, including the Baloch Students Organisation (Azad), a proscribed student group.

HRCP’s Butt said that members of the fact-finding team will probe the disappearances and would meet families of the missing students as well as officials of law-enforcement agencies and will also visit the location from where they were picked up.

He stressed that if the students have committed a crime, then that should be made public. According to Mumtaz and Kamran’s elder brother, they heard a knock on the door at 4am. On answering the door, he found some 10 to 12 masked men standing outside.

“Four vehicles were parked outside our house. Two of them were police mobiles, but I was told not to notice them,” he said. He added the men asked for his brothers and also insisted on entering the house, but he did not permit them to step inside.

However, he said, after checking all of their national identity cards, they took Mumtaz and Kamran away. Saifullah, the third missing student, also lived in the same locality with some relatives.