Ending the three-year-long anguish of a Mumbai-based family, Pakistani media recently reported that the Indian man who went missing in 2012 was in Pakistani Army's custody and is being "court-martialled". A Pakistani court on Wednesday disposed of a habeas corpus petition filed by the Mumbai resident's mother.
The family of 30-year-old Hamid Nehal Ansari had lost contact with him soon after he landed in Kabul in 2012.
On Wednesday, Pakistan's deputy attorney general Mussaratullah Khan told the Peshawar High Court that Ansari was in the custody of the Pakistan Army, Dawn reported. He said that he had been informed by the Defence Ministry but did not mention the charges against the Indian.
Ansari hailed from Mumbai, where he taught at a college for a while before attempting to move into aviation, The Times of India reported.
"Hamid decided to pursue an alternate career in aviation and lined up for a job interview in Afghanistan. He travelled to Kabul on November 4, 2012 and was due to return to India on November 15 which did not happen," his mother Fauzia Ansari told TOI.
Ansari reportedly travelled to Kohat in Pakistan to meet a woman whom he had befriended through social media, according to the Press Trust of India.
He had reportedly fallen in love with the woman and had crossed from Afghanistan to Pakistan to stop her from marrying another man, The Indian Express reported.
"The intelligence agencies arrested him from a hotel in Kohat and since then his family and friends have been unaware of his whereabouts," said Qazi Muhammad Anwar, the counsel for Ansari's mother reportedly.
Ansari's family now hopes to meet him and has urged the Indian government to pursue his case.
Indian officials have said that they will be "seeking information and consular access from Pakistan in the next few days," The Indian Express reported.
