The Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed the petition of a Kashmiri girl seeking the whereabouts of her two brothers allegedly picked up by police in the aftermath of the infamous Indian Airlines aircraft hijack drama at Kanawha. A Bench of Justices B N Aggrawal and G S Singhvi, dismissed the petition after accepting the plea of the Union Government that it had no information about the alleged detention of the duo, Mushtaq Ahmad Rah and Mohd Shafi Rah.

It was the stand of the Union Government that neither any case was registered against the duo nor were they picked up by the police as alleged in the petition filed by Ruquaiya through her counsel, Anil Karnwal.

According to the petition filed in 2006, the brothers who were running a leather factory in Nepal since 1995, were picked up by the police on August 28, 2000, after the Indian Airlines Aircraft IA 814 was hijacked minutes after take-off from Kathmandu on December 24, 1999 and later diverted to Kandahar in Afghanistan. Mushtaq Ahmad Raha and Mohd Shafi Rah, according to the petition, were among the 27 Kashmiris arrested by the Nepali police at the request of the Indian authorities.

However, since then it was claimed their whereabouts were not known despite directions from the NHRC and J&K Government for their production.

Having failed to know their whereabouts, the family filed a petition with the apex court seeking their production. Quoting some Home Ministry officials, the family claimed that the brothers were detained in a jail at Jodhpur, Rajasthan, a contention rebutted by the Government.

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