Pakistani court slams caretaker PM Kakar for non-appearance in missing Baloch students case

Islamabad, Feb 19 (PTI) A Pakistani court on Monday slammed caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar for failing to appear before it for a second time in a case related to several missing Baloch students, warning him that “no one is above the law”.

“Caretaker prime minister should not consider coming to court as an insult,” Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani of the Islamabad High Court remarked during the hearing.

The caretaker prime minister should not go to Karachi for the next hearing, but appear before the court, the IHC judge was quoted as saying by Geo News.

“No one is above the law here,” he said, adding that the premier was summoned because he was “accountable”.

The IHC summoned Kakar again, adjourning the hearing till February 28.

This is the second time that the caretaker prime minister has failed to appear before the court.

In November last year, the court had instructed the government to recover the missing students within seven days. It had noted that in case the authorities failed to comply with the order, Kakar accompanied by his ministers and secretaries for interior and defence would appear in the court on November 29.

However, the interim prime minister did not appear in court in November since he was on a foreign visit. The government made repeated assurances to the court that the students would return home soon, the Express Tribune newspaper reported.

The IHC on February 13 summoned the country’s interim chief executive and his two cabinet members due to the failure of the government authorities to recover some missing Baloch students despite repeated assurances.

As Justice Kayani resumed hearing the petition on Monday regarding the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances, he observed, “The purpose of summoning the prime minister was to inquire why the state’s premier is failing in his duties.”

The commission was established in 2011 to trace missing persons and fix responsibility on the individuals or organisations responsible for it, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Resource-rich Balochistan, Pakistan’s largest but least populated province, has been wrecked by a long-running separatist insurgency which has seen brutal repression by Pakistani security forces and enforced disappearances.

In November last year, interim Prime Minister Kakar admitted that according to a UN sub-committee estimate, around 50 people disappeared in Balochistan.

During the November 29 hearing, Attorney General for Pakistan (AGP) Mansoor Usman Awan informed the court that out of 50 missing persons, 22 had been recovered, while the whereabouts of 28 others were still unknown.

On January 10, Justice Kayani remarked that a day would come when intelligence officials would also be held accountable and face prosecution for cases. In a subsequent hearing, he summoned Kakar for a second time, observing: “The punishment of enforced disappearances should be the death penalty.”

During Monday’s hearing, AGP Awan appeared before the IHC and was asked about Kakar’s whereabouts. The AGP replied that the premier was in Karachi.

When asked about the whereabouts of the defence and interior ministers, Awan said the two were also busy. The interior ministry’s secretary then appeared before the court, at which Justice Kayani asked why the defence ministry’s secretary was not present.

The judge highlighted that it was the 24th hearing in the case.

“The petition was filed in 2022 and a commission had been formed. It took us two years to recover our citizens who did not even have any criminal case registered against them.

“There was no case against them including any drug, murder, or theft case let alone a terror case,” Kayani noted. He observed that “no documents or information” was shared with the court in the past two years.

Addressing AGP Awan, he said, “You had submitted an affidavit that no person would go missing after today. [Yet] a person is missing from Islamabad’s F-6 without a first information report against him.

“The purpose of summoning the prime minister was to inquire why the state’s premier is failing in his duties,” the IHC judge said.

“We have charges against our institutions regarding enforced disappearances. If the prime minister, defence minister and secretary, and the interior minister and secretary cannot perform their duties then they should leave their posts.”

AGP Awan requested that the incoming government review the matter instead of the caretaker setup. “When the elected government will come, it will look at the matter afresh,” he said.

At this, the judge noted: “There was one government for three-and-a-half years, then another for 16 months, and then the caretakers but nothing came out of it. There are direct allegations against institutions here.”