PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday stopped the deportation of a former Afghan forensic expert and his family, ruling that no action should be taken against them until a final decision was made on their asylum applications.
A two-member bench comprising Justice Naeem Anwar and Justice Wiqar Ahmad heard the petition.During the proceedings, counsel for the petitioner, Osama Khalil advocate, informed the court that the petitioner, Khalil Ahmad Pakhtunyar, had served as head of forensic medicine in Afghanistan and was also a member of the Anti-Torture and Human Rights Committee.
The lawyer pleaded that following the Taliban’s return to power, the petitioner and his six family members faced serious threats to their lives, forcing them to relocate to Pakistan.He contended that the family had applied for relocation to a third country through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the French Embassy. However, ongoing actions by authorities against undocumented Afghan nationals in Pakistan had put them at risk of deportation.
