Pakistani journalist who fought for the release of Indian citizen rescued

Zeenat Shahzadi, a Pakistani journalist of Daily Nai Khaber and Metro News TV channel, was allegedly kidnapped by unidentified men while she was on her way to work in an autorickshaw from her home in a populated locality of Lahore on August 19, 2015.

Shahzadi was believed to have “forcibly disappeared” while working on the case of Indian citizen Hamid Ansari, who was arrested by the country’s security forces in 2012.

The chief of Pakistan’s Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIED) Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal last evening said that Shahzadi was rescued from an area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Thursday night.

Hamid Ansari, Mumbai-based engineer, was arrested for illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2012.  “Non-state actors and anti-state agencies had abducted her and she has been rescued from their custody,” Iqbal said, adding that tribals from Balochistan and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa provinces have played a key role in her recovery.

“Zeenat Shahzadi today has been reunited with her family in Lahore and we are happy for her safe recovery. I am thrilled that she is home safe,” human rights activist Beena Sarwar said.

Grief-stricken over her kidnapping, Shahzadi’s brother Saddam Hussain had committed suicide in March last year, making her disappearance the focus of headlines again.

Two years ago, Shahzadi had filed an application with the Supreme Court’s Human Rights Cell on behalf of Fauzia Ansari, the mother of Indian national Hamid Ansari, who had gone missing in Pakistan in November, 2012. Her prodding had forced security agencies in Pakistan to admit that Ansari was in their custody.

Ansari, a Mumbai resident, was arrested in 2012 for illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan reportedly to meet a girl he had befriended online. He was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment reportedly by a military court on charges of illegally entering Pakistan and ‘spying’. He is still in jail.

Human rights activists, especially former secretary general Human Rights Commission of Pakistan IA Rehman, have voiced for the release of Ansari, saying since he has served his sentence, he should be set free now.