The Sindh High Court (SHC) has directed the federal law officer to submit a report with regard to the disappearance of a Pakistani student from the Karachi airport.
The direction came on a petition seeking the whereabouts of Naveed Anwar, who had disappeared from the Karachi airport after being deported from the UAE on August 5, 2025. The petitioner’s counsel Jibran Nasir said the detainee had been taken into custody by the UAE authorities on November 15, 2023, in connection with an alleged social media-related offence, but his family had not been informed about the nature of the offence and the criminal proceedings.
Nasir said the detainee had been deported from the UAE to Pakistan and had been taken into custody by personnel of the law enforcement agencies (LEAs) on his arrival at the airport. He said that the whereabouts of the detainee are still unknown despite several representations to the relevant quarters of the LEAs.
He said that neither has the detainee been produced before any court of the law nor any details of the cases have been provided to the family of the detainee. He requested the court to direct the federal and provincial LEAs to ascertain his whereabouts and provide the details of the cases registered against him, if any. The federal law officer sought time to file comments on behalf of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA).
An SHC division bench headed by Justice Adnanul Karim Memon directed the federal law officer and the FIA to file comments on the petition, and warned that in case of non-compliance, the FIA director general would have to explain the non-compliance, and give reasons for withholding the required response.
The court also issued notices to the federal and provincial law officers on petitions against alleged enforced disappearances of citizens from different parts of the city. The petitioners said Sikandar, Shahid Arman, Yayha Ansari and Mirza Riaz Hussain had been picked up by personnel of the LEAs from Federal B Area, Mehmoodabad and other areas, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
