The Pakistan government in a surprising and rare move termed the territory that is Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) as ‘foreign land’. The Pakistan government told Islamabad High Court (IHC) on Friday that local Kashmiri poet and journalist Ahmed Farhad Shah is under the custody of police in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) and cannot be presented because he is on “foreign land”.
The admission came when the court was hearing the abduction case of the local Kashmiri poet and journalist, according to a report by news agency IANS.
Pakistan-based journalists and experts have told the news agency that the Farhad disappearance case ‘has given a new dimension to the issue of Kashmir’.
Farhad has been missing for the past two weeks. It was discovered that two cases were lodged against him by the police in PoK.
During Friday’s proceedings, the additional attorney general appeared before IHC judge Mohsin Akhter Kiani. He informed the court that Farhad had at least two legal cases registered against him in Muzaffarabad and Dhirkot in PoK.
The poet’s lawyer, Imaan Mazaari, said the additional attorney general admitted in court that Farhad was currently on “foreign land.” Therefore, he could not be produced in court.
Farhad was abducted from his residence in Rawalpindi. Following this, his wife filed a case in the Islamabad high court. During the hearings, judge Kayani criticized Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agencies for continuing the practice of forced abductions of people.
Senior political analyst Hamid Mir remarked that the law is being misused to establish the supremacy of the institutions while speaking to the news outlet. “In the last hearing, the court was told that Ahmed Farhad was in Dhirkot lock-up. But when Farhad’s wife and child went to Dhirkot, he was not there. That means the Attorney General lied before the Islamabad High Court,” he said.
“(The) Farhad case has given a new dimension to the issue of Kashmir. Now that they have admitted it, I want to ask how did the Pakistan Rangers go there (to PoK) during the recent anti-inflation protest,” he further added.
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