Missing person: case adjourned for indefinite period

The Supreme Court on Monday adjourned the proceedings of a missing person's case for an indefinite period. A three-member bench headed by Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali resumed the hearing of a petition filed by Amina Masood Janjua, the wife of Masood Janjua.
During the course of proceedings, Additional Advocate General of Punjab Razzaq A. Mirza apprised the court that UNHCR had not permitted to record the statement of Dr Munir who had passed two statements about Masood Janjua in the past. Dr Munir had said that he had information about Janjua in his statement; however, Munir retracted his statement afterward, the AAG maintained.
The AAG said that hence there was no evidence to support that Masood Janjua was alive following the second statement of Dr Munir. Justice Mian Saqib Nisar remarked that though it was a case of fundamental human rights, the court had to review all the available evidences while on record there was no evidence about Janjua after the retraction of Dr Munir.
The petitioner, Amna Masood Janjua, pleaded the court to cross-examine other witnesses who had recorded their statements about her missing husband. The court asked the petitioner to consult the commission on missing persons, if she wanted to cross-examine other witnesses in the matter.
Justice Anwar Zaheer Jamali remarked that the court while going beyond its jurisdiction had directed the police to record the statement of Dr Munir, who was in Sri Lanka. The court adjourned the hearing of case for an indefinite time. Earlier, On February 10 the Punjab Police had told the apex court that the UNHCR had declined to share any information about Dr Munir who, according to Amina Masood Janjua, had once written in a diary that he had heard about a businessman from Rawalpindi named Janjua in a detention centre in Rawalpindi.
SP Photohar Haroon Joya told the court that privacy laws and international conventions under which the UNHCR operated did not permit it to share any information about an individual listed with it or someone residing in its campus. A report submitted by the Rawalpindi police said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through a letter written on July 25, 2013, had informed police that the High Commission in Colombo had tried to get access to Dr Munir through a UNHCR office in Sri Lanka. However, police had been told informally that Dr Munir was living in a UNHCR camp in Kandy and listed at Serial No 53 of the UNHCR list as an asylum seeker.