ISLAMABAD: The Supreme Court on Friday resumed the hearing in the petition on the law and order situation and human rights violations in Balochistan, Media reported.
A three-judge bench of the apex court, comprising Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, Justice Khilji Arif Hussain and Justice Jawwad S. Khawaja, heard the petition filed by the Balochistan Bar Association on the law and order situation in Pakistan’s largest province.During the hearing, Chief Secretary Balochistan Babar Yaqoob Fateh Muhammad said no secret operation was being carried out in the province.
A report was also submitted before the bench by the federation and intelligence organisations on the province’s law and order situation. It was rejected by the apex court shortly afterwards.In his remarks, the chief justice said that no changes had been made to the report which stated that no secret operation was ongoing in the southwestern province.
Moreover, the report stated that no so-called ‘death squads’ of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Military Intelligence (MI) were operating in Balochistan.It further stated that there were no ‘missing’ persons in the custody of the country’s intelligence agencies.Earlier during Thursday’s hearing, Balochistan’s former chief minister Sardar Akhtar Jan Mengal finally described enforced disappearances as the real cause of the current unrest in Balochistan.
“Why should not we divorce peacefully rather than seeking for a bloody divorce if the rulers have decided to keep on giving us mutilated dead bodies,” Sardar Mengal said. Sardar Mengal, president of the Balochistan National Party, had come from London to especially apprise people of the issues responsible for the breakdown of law and order in the restive province. – Dawn
