Pakistani man disappears while in captivity

Authorities and the wife of a Pakistani man who surfaced here after secretly leaving his home in the neighbouring country's Punjab province in 1991 have no information on his current whereabouts.

Mohammed Istaiq Shabbir posed as Saleem Junaid, a businessman dealing in automobile spare parts, after coming to India. He was arrested in 1998 on charges of being an Inter Services Intelligence (Pakistan's secret service) agent and sent to a jail in Delhi.

After spending three years in the Delhi prison, he was sent to Hyderabad Jail, where he remained till June 24, 2006.

His wife Momana Khatoon and her kin visited him at the jail in Hyderabad.

The 38-year-old Shabbir was subsequently shifted to the Visakhapatnam Jail before his deportation to Pakistan, but then mysteriously disappeared, his wife claimed.

According to Visakhapatnam Jail's Superintendent Narsimha, no person named Shabbir or Saleem Junaid was sent to the prison. According to the records, only Abdul Jaheed, a man facing trial on charges of links with the ISI, was sent back to Pakistan from the prison.

Across the border, Shabbir's father has appealed to President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to restore his son back to him even though the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi does not recognise him as a Pakistani national.

Shabbir's 60-year-old father, Mohammed Shabbir, however, said he has all the papers to prove his son is a Pakistani. The father also said he did not know how his son travelled to India after leaving his home in Kala Gujran village in Punjab province when he was 22 years old.

According to Momana Khatoon and her brother Aslaam, Shabbir was introduced to her father Mohammad Ali Khan, a retired army officer living in Vijayanagar Colony in Hyderabad, by one Nasseruddin.

Trusting Nasseruddin, who introduced Shabbir as a businessman, Khan got his daughter married to him in 1996. The couple has two sons aged 11 and 9 years.

Nasseruddin, said to be president of the Tehreek Tehfooz Shariat-e-Islam, was arrested by Gujarat Police in connection with the murder of former state minister Hiren Pandya.

Naseeruddin was also accused of aiding and abetting Shabbir but was later acquitted of this charge. In Pakistan, Shabbir's father told reporters his son had written him a letter in 1998 when he was in a Delhi jail.

He said Shabbir had written that he had left home to meet his mother's relatives in Hyderabad. He also claimed that he had last heard that his son was being held in a jail in Visakhapatnam.