Senate body seeks details of unidentified bodies recovered from Balochistan

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The Senate Functional Committee on Human Rights, in its meeting, has asked the Balochistan Home secretary to send the 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 the meeting by Balochistan Home Secretary Dr Akbar Harifal.

The committee gave a time period of one month to present the details along with 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 whether any investigation was being carried out 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 as its convener and Senators Sitara 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 was against him of any offence, he should be tried in open court and should not be kept hidden and the provincial government should become a party in the case.

The committee also urged the 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 Prisons IGs 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 could 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 control 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 by Senator Farhatullah Babar, Senator Mohsin Leghari, Senator Mufti Abdul Sattar, Senator Nisar Muhammad, Senator Dr Jehanzeb, Senator Sehar Kamran, Senator Sitara Ayaz, HRCP Chairman Justice Ali Nawaz Chauhan, Balochistan Home secretary, IG Prisons of all provinces, joint secretary of Ministry of Human Rights and human rights activist Tahira Abdullah.

1 COMMENT

  1. How long you will commit the genocide of our people ? one day you will have to pay the price for the barbaric acts .

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