The interior ministry informed the parliament that there were 1,640 missing persons in the country with 142 missing in Sindh – majority hailing from Karachi, media reported.
When questioned on alleged “enforced disappearances” during a National Assembly session, headed by Deputy Speaker Javed Murtaza Abbasi, the interior ministry said that the last monthly report of the inquiry commission was received on February.
The interior ministry also informed NA that 1,14,192,450 computerised CNIC had been issued by NADRA. It further added that 634,315 computerised cards were issued in Punjab, 23755847 in Sindh, 15,187,870 in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, 671,420 in Gilgit-Baltistan and 2,921,524 in Kashmir.
In February, Head of the Commission on Enforced Disappearance Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal offered to brief the Supreme Court judges in their chamber on missing persons cases, particularly those related to the province of Balochistan
Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Sajid Ilyas Bhatti submitted a report on behalf of the commission before the apex court’s three-judge bench, headed by Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan, which has been hearing the missing persons’ case for the last couple of months.
The report said the commission had disposed of 3,000 cases of missing persons while 1,577 cases were still pending. It said Justice (retd) Iqbal, also the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), gave one hour every day to examine cases of the missing persons.
