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Missing cybercrime officer's wife also 'unreachable', Pakistani court told

Judge gives police three days to recover senior official of National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency abducted six days ago from capital

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Ali Hamza

Correspondent

Ali; a journalist with 3 years of experience, working in Newspaper. Worked in Field, covered Big Legal Constitutional and Political Events in Pakistan since 2022. Graduate of DePaul University, Chicago.

Missing cybercrime officer's wife also 'unreachable', Pakistani court told
Islamabad High Court.
AFP/File

A Pakistani court was informed on Monday that the petitioner, the wife of a senior cybercrime official who had gone missing six days ago from the federal capital, was also unreachable.

Deputy Director Muhammad Usman was taken from the basement parking of his residence in Islamabad on October 14. Police and intelligence agencies have since failed to trace his whereabouts, raising questions about the state’s ability to protect its own law enforcement personnel.

The case has deepened concerns over a surge in disappearances of the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency.

The case reached Islamabad High Court through a habeas corpus petition filed by Usman’s wife, Rozina Usman. But her lawyer, Raja Rizwan Abbasi, told the judge he now fears she may have also been “abducted”.

“Rozina called me and said she was being pressured to withdraw her petition. Since Saturday, her phone has been switched off and I have had no contact with her,” Abbasi said.

Justice Muhammad Azam Khan, who heard the case, warned police officials of personal accountability if they failed to locate Usman. “If police fail to recover him within three days, the Central Director of the NCCIA and the Inspector General of Islamabad Police will have to appear before the court themselves,” the judge said.

Abbasi told the court that CCTV footage showed Usman being taken away in a white Toyota Corolla with a fake license plate. “If the plate was fake, how was this vehicle moving freely in Islamabad?” Justice Khan asked, expressing frustration over the slow pace of investigation.

“This is a very serious matter,” the judge remarked, ordering investigators to obtain call data records of threatening phone calls received by Rozina. “Your city has checkposts and cameras everywhere. You must recover him or we’ll start doing what other benches have been doing,” he added, in an apparent warning of judicial intervention.

Police told the court they were “trying to recover Usman by this evening” but requested seven more days to complete the investigation. The assistant attorney general informed the court that a formal police report had been registered at the Shams Colony Police Station.

Worrying pattern

According to sources in the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency, Usman’s disappearance is part of a worrying pattern. At least six other NCCIA officers have reportedly gone missing in Lahore and one in Gujranwala during October, suggesting a wave of targeted kidnappings of officials from Pakistan’s federal cybercrime unit.

The abductions come despite government assurances that progress is being made to end the country’s longstanding issue of enforced disappearances.

Last week, Attorney General Mansoor Usman Awan told the National Judicial (Policy Making) Committee that “the issue of enforced disappearances has almost been resolved” following amendments to the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1997.

The amended law requires detainees to be presented before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest. Awan said a mechanism to ensure compliance is being finalized and will be presented at the committee’s next meeting.

But the abduction of a senior cybercrime investigator in the heart of Islamabad — and fears that his wife may also have been taken — have renewed scrutiny of Pakistan’s human rights record and its failure to prevent enforced disappearances, even among its own law enforcement officers.

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