Missing Pak journalist on trail of ‘Indian spy’ found after 2 years

ISLAMABAD: Security forces found Zeenat Shahzadi, the female journalist who went missing in Lahore in August 2015 while tracing an Indian prisoner accused of espionage.

Pointing out that non-state actors and enemy agencies had kidnapped Zeenat and that she was recovered from them, Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal, head of Pakistan's missing persons commission, said on Friday, "Tribal elders in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa played an important role in her recovery on Wednesday night from near the Pak-Af border."

Zeenat's family and human rights organisations had earlier said they believed she was kidnapped by Pakistan's secret agencies.

Zeenat, 25, is a freelance reporter who had raised her voice for missing persons in Pakistan. Through social media she managed to get in touch with Fauzia Ansari, the mother of Hamid Ansari, an Indian national who had gone missing in Pakistan.

She had filed an application with the Pakistan Supreme Court's human rights cell on behalf of Fauzia Ansari and played an important role in encouraging the government Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances to investigate his case.

As a result, security agencies had admitted to the commission that Hamid was in their custody.

Shahzadi's family had once told human rights activists that before her abduction she had been forcibly taken away by the security agencies, detained for four hours and questioned about Hamid Ansari.

In 2015, Hamid was jailed for three years by a military court on espionage charges. The same year Shahzadi, too, went missing. Her disappearance hit the headlines when her brother, Saddam, 17, killed himself in March 2016.