Senate Functional Committee asks for details of all unidentified bodies recovered in A and B areas of Balochistan in last five years.
Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights in its meeting asked the home secretary Balochistan to send the number together with all necessary details of all bodies found dumped in A and B areas of Balochistan during the last five years.
The meeting was held with Senator Nasreen Jalil as chairperson here at the Parliament House on Thursday. The committee was given numerical details of recovery of the unidentified bodies from B area of Balochistan for the last two years in today’s meeting by home secretary Balochistan Dr M. Akbar Harifal. The committee gave a time period of one month to present the details alongwith information of FIRs registered and reasons if FIRs were not registered. The committee also asked for details of DNA tests carried out for verification of identity.
Senator Farhatullah Babar raised the point of any investigation being made to find any correlation between the recovered unidentified bodies and the missing persons in Balochistan.
The committee discussed in detail the aftermath of the attack on police training centre in Quetta and expressed its concerns over lack of standard operating procedures for dealing with incidents like these. A sub-committee was formed with Senator Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldini as its convener and Senators Sitaray Ayaz and Sehar Kamran as members.
The committee meeting was given details about the status of the case of abduction of publisher and social worker Abdul Wahid Baloch and death of a pregnant woman Babra Bibi at Adiala Jail. In the former case, the committee recommended that if some evidence is against him of any offence, he should be tried in open courts and should not be kept hidden and the provincial government should become a party in the case. The committee also urged National Assembly to take up the Anti-Torture bill as early as possible which has been passed by the Senate. The government of Pakistan was also urged to consider the recommendations of working group of UN on forced disappearances and sign the international convention.
The committee heard Inspectors General of Prisons of Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Punjab and looked into the implementation status of the recommendations of the committee given in 2005. The committee recommended having a separate jail for the federal area so that burden on provincial jails may be lessened and human rights can be taken care of. The committee also asked for improving the transportation mechanism of taking the under trial prisoners to courts and discussed whether the arrangement should be under the police custody or the prison administration.
The meeting also discussed the recent incident of two brothers who were declared free by the Supreme Court but had already been hanged. The committee demanded a thorough investigation into mishandling of the case.
The committee was attended among others by Senator Farhatullah Babar, Senator Mohsin Leghari, Senator Mufti Abdul Sattar, Senator Nisar Muhammad, Senator Dr Jehanzeb Jamaldini, Senator Sehar Kamran, Senator Sitaray Ayaz, Chairman HRCP Justice Ali Nawaz Chauhan, Home secretary Balochistan, IG Prisons of all provinces, Joint Secretary ministry of human rights and human rights activist Tahira Abdullah.
A Meeting of the Function Committee on Human Rights 27 Oct, 2016 At 10:30 A.M. in Committee Room No. 4 Parliament House, Islamabad.
