Where Are They?

Five months after Chetan Kumar disappeared, his family is now in a state of anxiety. They do not know where he is, whether he’s dead or alive. They have not heard about him, or from him, and they do not even know whether he is in Pakistan or not.

“My father, my uncle Rupu, and I were sitting in our drawing room,” says Chetan’s son, Suresh, a student of Sindh University, “when suddenly eight men burst inside. This was July seventeenth, at about 6:45 pm. They started asking my father questions. They asked him his name, and when he affirmed that his name was Chetan, they started kicking and punching him, and roughly pushed him outside the house. When I tried to stop them, they did the same to me.”

In the same area of Umerkot lived another man called Gordhan das alias Bhagat. He was in his fifties and had cordial relations with everyone he knew, according to his daughter-in-law Anita. Her husband and Bhagat’s son Om Parkash says that he and his father had been sitting at the barber’s shop for some time, when four men in a white double door vehicle, with blue lights on top, stopped in front of him. They asked him his name and said that they belonged to a “law enforcing secret investigation agency” and that Gordhan was required for investigation. They forcibly dragged Bhagat into the car, and then covered his face with a black cloth. According to them, the men warned everyone around, that if anyone attempted to lodge and FIR, their fate would be the same.

The illegal confinement of G.M Bhagat and Chetan Kumar is not something out of the ordinary. Umerkot’s people have often sent in their complaints to the HRCP saying that they are completely unprotected. Their complaints reveal that there is religious discrimination in the district, along with these occasional incidents, by supposed law enforcement agencies, but none of these elements, which intimidate the people of this region, are held accountable in any way.

“My father worked in a brick company called ‘Super Shine’,” says Suresh, anger slowly rising, making his voice waver, “he had a perfectly clean record, and there was simply nothing that he did because of which he was picked up like this. Each time I think of him, I remember that evening when those men dragged him off in their double-door, white government vehicle. I managed to note down the number plate code; that’s how I know it was a government car. It was GS-0162. When we went to the Umerkot Police Station to file an FIR, they refused, because they did not want to tamper with what the ‘agencies’ did.”

Neither Suresh, nor Parkas, know anything about their fathers’ disappearance. But they have signed a petition and make a move in court. In his written statement given to the court as well as they HRCP, Suresh has drawn attention to the fact that Chetan was arrested in 2001, as well, in false charges concerning a Tando Adam railway track bomb blast. For this he was kept in custody for four years before he was acquitted by the High Court.

Amarnath, a council member of the HRCP, an advocate, and the president of the Hindu Panchayat, is dealing with this case. He revealed the investigation of the HRCP Fact Finding Report. According to the report, the police of Umerkot have given the impression that the missing men had actually been picked up by “Wing 303 of the Field Investigation Unit”. The Head Constable or ‘moharrar’ of the Umerkot Police Station thinks that Chetan could have been picked up in connection with the Mumbai blasts earlier this year by the agencies. These however are not confirmed facts in any way, for they stand without solid proof. But in both cases the police refused to file any FIR and they had themselves suggested that it was the work of “agencies” and that they could not interfere.

Both the families have been completely broken by this incident. They are poor, and hardly have any income coming into their house. Bhagat had earlier lost a son too, in reaction to an injection. Now his own unwarranted disappearance has caused his family to fall into severe depression and stress.

Suresh says his grandfather passed away in 2003, soon after Chetan was arrested, in connection with the Tando Adam case. His mother is ill, and his family does not have a breadwinner, as Suresh happens to be the oldest, yet is still a student.

How is it that the agencies are being blamed for these cases of missing persons? In Pakistan, since the past few years, there have been a number of missing persons who have been picked up by “law enforcement agencies” and these people have had a clear record. There are men and women who are included in this list. No one knows their whereabouts, no one knows why they have been picked up and they seem to have been simply disappearing into thin air. Where are these people? Who has picked them up? Why is the government, which poses to be an advocate of security in the country, not looking into this extremely serious matter? How long is the ordinary man, going to live his life in fear, and how long will those actually involved in corruption live in complete security? This issue is not to be taken lightly. Something has to be done about it.