ISLAMABAD   -  Islamabad High Court (IHC) Sunday issued a written order following its directives to caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul Haq Kakar, as well as secretaries of ministries concerned, to personally appear in the next hearing on Monday(today) of the missing Baloch students’ case.

The four-page written order, issued by the IHC’s Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani, stated that the prime minister of Pakistan, defence, human rights, and interior ministries along with the secretaries of the ministries concerned should ensure their physical appearance in the February 19 hearing at 10:00am. 

The IHC will resume today hearing the petition seeking recovery of missing Baloch students. A single bench of IHC comprising Justice Mohsin Akhtar Kayani will conduct hearing of a case related to the implementation of the recommendations of the Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances and a petition seeking recov­ery of missing Baloch students. During the previous hearing, As­sistant Attorney Gener­al (AAG) Usman Ghum­man informed the court that one missing student had been re­covered and request­ed the court to post­pone the hearing due to the attorney general’s unavailability. Howev­er, Justice Kayani ex­pressed his displeasure at the failure of govern­ment in recovery of the missing persons and said that the punish­ment of enforced dis­appearances should be the death penalty. He remarked that usu­ally death penalty is awarded once but in these cases, the pun­ishment should be giv­en twice. He added that he was summoning the caretaker prime minis­ter for now and would later also issue direc­tives for the incoming premier to appear be­fore the court. At this, the Assistant Attor­ney General said that the government need­ed more time in the case. He further stat­ed that another Baloch missing student had been recovered. Justice Kayani said that he be­ing “generous” is not summoning the direc­tor generals of the Mil­itary Intelligence and the Inter-Services In­telligence and reject­ed the AAG’s plea. He also said that PM Ka­kar must appear in per­son on Monday at 10 AM, and explain why we should not register a case against him. The commission was estab­lished in 2011 to trace missing persons and fix responsibility on the in­dividuals or organiza­tions responsible for it. In November last year, the IHC had warned that a case could be reg­istered against the in­terim premier and oth­ers if they failed to reunite the missing Ba­loch students with their families.