LAHORE: A day after a judge of the Islamabad High Court strongly criticised the army`s role as a `mediator` between the government and the Faizabad sit-in leadership, a Lahore High Court judge on Tuesday highly admired the same role of the military.

Justice Qazi Mohammad Amin Ahmad, while hearing a habeascorpus petition for the recovery of Majlis-i-Wahdatul Muslimeen (MWM) leader Nasir Abbas Sherazi from alleged detention of law enforcement agencies, observed that had the military not ensured an agreement between the government and the protesters there would have been massive killings due to police operation.

Everyone knew that it was the army which saved the country from disaster, Justice Ahmad said. He also lauded the sacrifices being rendered by the army in the war against terrorism.

Justice Ahmad referred to the martyrdom of Major Ishaq in a recent terrorist attack in Dera Ismail Khan and shared with grief that he had many sleeplessnights after seeing the picture, widely circulated on social media, of the wife of the young officer sitting beside her husband`s coffin.

During the proceedings regarding the sit-in by religious parties that had paralysed the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad for two-and-a-half weeks, Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the IHC had questioned how the army could act as a mediator between the government and a group that had committed an act of terrorism.

Addressing an additional advocate general, Justice Ahmad expressed his disappointment over the derogatory language used by politicians against the judiciary and, without naming any political party, said: `Asl( your ministers to start respecting the courts.

Coming back to the subject matter, the judge regretted that tracing the whereabouts of a missing person had become impossible for the government and its agencies.

Colonel Ahmad of the Military Intelligence told the court that his agency had no information about the missing MWM leader.

Justice Ahmad expressed his dis-may over non-appearance of officials of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Intelligence Bureau (IB) despite issuance of summons.

He said the court could only asl( Pakistani agencies, and not Indian agencies, about the whereabouts of a missing citizen.

The judge adjourned the hearing to Dec 4, with a directive to the Punjab police and the intelligence agencies to ensure recovery of the MWMleader.

Petitioner Ali Abbas alleged that his brother Sherazi had been abducted by police from WapdaTown at the behest of Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Law Minister Rana Sanaullah.

He said his brother had filed in the high court a petition seeking disqualification of the law minister for uttering `derogatory` remarks regarding a judge who had conducted an inquiry into the 2014 Model Town killings. He claimed that his brother had been kidnapped because he had filed the case against the law minister.

The petitioner requested the judge to order police to produce his detained brother before the court.