PESHAWAR: The wives of four brothers of a prominent business family of Peshawar have again moved Peshawar High Court against `enforced disappearance` of their husbands for the last around 11 months.

They have filed a joint petition claiming that the captors of their husbands had not fulfilled their commitment of setting them free after they withdrew their earlier petition as per their demand.

The petition is filed by senior lawyer Mohammad Muazzam Butt on behalf of Gulalai Alkozai and three other women, who are wives of the missing brothers named Mohammad Nasir Alkozai, Usman Alkozai, Abdul Waris Alkozai and Zahir Alkozai.

The petitioners had last year filed plea for recovery of their husbands and several important proceedings had taken place in it including formation of a jointinvestigation team of law enforcement and intelligence agencies. However, the JIT couldn`t trace the persons involved in the abduction of the `detainees.

The petitioners had withdrawn their petition on Oct 29, 2024, with the permission to file a fresh petition, if needed. Their counsel had informed the bench that the captors of the four detainees had demanded withdrawal of the petition as a pre-condition for setting them free.

A single-member bench of PHC Chief Justice Ihstiaq Ibrahim had permitted them to withdraw the earlier petition.

However, after passing of almost three months, the detainees have so far not been released.

The petitioners claimed that the detainees had been abducted from their residence at Hayatabad Township allegedly by persons in police uniform on Feb 28, 2024. They said that the detainees were shifted to unknown location and since then their whereabouts were not known.

They stated that police registered an FIR against the abduction of the detainees but there was no progress inthe investigation.

During pendency of the earlier petition for last many months, the high court had summoned several high-ranking officers including provincial police chief but the whereabouts of the detainees couldn`t be traced.

While the detainees` relatives had named a police sub-inspector, Syed Rasool Shah, who was then additional SHO of Hayatabad police station, as one of the suspects visible in CCTV footage of the abduction of the detainees, he had appeared before the court and stated that he was not the person shown in the footage.

On direction of the court, he had also submitted an affidavit on oath to that effect.

The respondents in the fresh petition are federal government through secretary interior, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government through its chief secretary, KP inspector general of police (IGP), KP home secretary, ministry of human rights through its director general, Military Intelligence director general, provincial secretary of parliamentary affairs and human rights department and SHO of Tatara police station.The petitioners stated that the detainees were well-known businessmen and had invested billions of rupees in the Pakistani business sector. They said that they were compelled to withdraw the earlier petition with the commitment that the detainees would be released.

They alleged that the captors were now coercing them to invest Rs2 billion in some businesses after which the detainees would be released. They contended that the demand of the captors was a violation of Article 18 of the Constitution, which guaranteed freedom of trade and business.

They said that they had also approached federal interior ministry beside others, seeking release of the detainees, but they had now been conveyed that the matter was beyond the authority of ministry.

It merits a mention that after the earlier petition was filed in thehighcourt,NationalDatabase and Registration Authority (Nadra) had issued notices to the family members of detainees for cancellation of their Computerised National Identity Cards, claiming that they were Afghan nationals and not Pakistanis.