An Indian national, who went to help a girl in Pakistan he met on Facebook, has been missing since 2012, a court heard, media reported Wednesday.
Police told the Peshawar High Court Tuesday that personnel of intelligence agencies had taken away Nehal Hamid Ansari, 28, from a police station in Kohat district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province before his mysterious disappearance, Dawn online reported.
Investigation officer Sajjad Khan of Kohat police told Chief Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel and Justice Ikramullah Khan that the police's Riders Squad had arrested Ansari in the city and shifted him to the Kohat Development Authority (KDA) police station for interrogation.
He said the arrest was made on information provided by Intelligence Bureau inspector Naeem Khan.
The investigation officer said then station house officer of the KDA police station, Faizullah Khan, insisted that personnel of intelligence agencies took the Indian man away after the police quizzed him and that his whereabouts had not been known since.
The court then issued directions to the SHO, who currently serves in Hangu district, to show up Oct 29 along with the relevant records about the Indian national.
Later the hearing was adjourned.
The missing person's mother, Fauzia Ansari, had filed the petition.
The lawyer for the petitioner, Shakil Asif, Tuesday produced a joint investigation team's (JIT) report in the court on the missing Indian.
The lawyer said, according to the report, Ansari had gone to Kohat Nov 14, 2012 and booked a room in a local hotel on what later turned out to be a forged national identity card.
He said the hotel owner claimed the man later stepped out and did not return.
"The hotel owner insisted the SHO of the KDA police station came to him at midnight on that day and gave him the keys of the guy's room saying he was an Indian citizen, whose real name was Nehal Hamid Ansari," the lawyer for the petitioner was quoted as saying.
The lawyer said his client wanted to know who had persuaded her son to visit Pakistan from Afghanistan, where he had gone to find job.
He also wanted to know who had made his client's son's fake Pakistani identity card.
Asif said Pakistani laws were applicable to the missing Indian national and therefore, he should be dealt with under the law of the land.
The petitioner said her son, an MBA degree holder, used to teach at the Mumbai Management College.
She said her son first went to Afghanistan in November, 2012, in search of an aviation job and then entered Pakistan to help a Kohat girl in distress.
The petitioner claimed her son was the president of the Rotary Club, New Delhi, and had got in contact with the girl on Facebook.
She insisted Pakistani friends of her son had suggested him to cross into Pakistan without a visa.
The petitioner had earlier sent an application for relief to the human rights cell of the Pakistan Supreme Court, which had forwarded it to the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances in March 2014.
On April 10, 2014, the commission directed the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa home department to form a JIT to trace the missing person's whereabouts.
On the directions of the commission, the city police station in Karak registered an FIR of the disappearance of the Indian national.
The court earlier issued notice to Pakistan's defence and interior ministries demanding an explanation on the disappearance.