The head of the missing persons’ commission and chairman of National Accountability Bureau (NAB), Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal on Tuesday briefed the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights and said that any political party that comes into power forgets about the issue of missing persons.
Iqbal said that the issue of missing persons has become a political problem. “Politicians always raise the issue of missing persons but unfortunately they forget it the moment they come to power,” he added
In the briefing, the head of the missing persons’ commission said that a total of 5,290 cases of enforced disappearances were registered with the commission, out of which the commission has solved 3,462 and presently 1,828 cases of missing persons are under investigation.
However, he did not comment how 3462 cases were resolved.
He claimed that out of the total number of missing persons, the number of missing persons from Balochistan is 131 only.
However, the figures do not match with the number claimed by the Voice For Baloch Missing Persons, a campaign group by families of victims. According to VBMP the real number of missing men, women and children from Balochistan is in tens of thousands.
In Sindh, according to the commission, as many as 1,357 cases of missing persons were reported during last seven years. However, according to the commission, only 183 people were missing at present. Similarly, the figures presented by the commission did not match with the figures presented by Voice For Missing Persons of Sindh.
Human rights groups and victim families often accuse the Pakistani security agencies of misusing the anti-terror laws to illegally abduct common citizens.