AS one more case of mysterious disappearance hits the newspaper lines, the nation is shocked to know that the victims happen to be an eminent behavioural neuroscientist and her three US-born children. They had gone missing from Karachi in 2003, and the US only acknowledged this week that Dr Aafia Siddiqui, holding a degree in biology from MIT and a doctorate in behavioural neuroscience from Brandeis University, was under detention. But the story of the circumstances, the timing and the place from where she had been picked up that the Americans purveyed for the world to believe hardly sounds credible. It has been roundly denied by her family and attorney. According to the US, Dr Siddiqui was loitering outside the compound of Ghazni Governor in Afghanistan on July 17 this year when she was taken into custody and had in her possession numerous documents on making explosives, chemical weapons and other weapons involving biological material and neurological agents. Then while under detention at the notorious Bagram airbase cell she shot at American officials after getting hold of a rifle of one of them. If a PhD from Brandeis (Harvard) in behavioural neuroscience needs to keep documents in front of her to make explosives, it must be a very poor standard of education And if GIs can pass on guns to 'dangerous criminals' in custody, the superpower needs to have better trained, tougher soldiers to keep its global overlordship. It seems secret agents everywhere are adept at fabricating charges that cannot bear scrutiny. The government of Pakistan has to do a lot explaining about the disappearance of Dr Siddiqui and her children and how and where she had been kept. Her sister has accused the US authorities of physically and mentally torturing her. Her attorney Elaine Sharp endorses the sister, adding a 'combination of US, Pakistan and Afghan officials' were involved in torturing her. And HRCP top official Iqbal Haider urged the judge at New York due to hear her case to inquire about the whereabouts of her children and ensure that she was not sent to prisons like Guantanamo Bay or tortured. Wouldn't Dr Siddiqui's tale of woe bring to the ruling leadership's mind the urgent need to have Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry back on the bench?