Speaking at a session of Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights, the federal minister said, “We had prepared the bill regarding missing persons and it was passed by the [relevant] standing committee and the National Assembly. But it went missing after it was sent to the Senate.”

She noted that reports emerged that the bill was at the Senate Secretariat, according to Dawn report.

The NA passed the bill Criminal Law (Amendment) Bill 2021 on November 8, 2021 which was aimed at making amendments to the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) and Code of Criminal Procedure.

The bill was introduced in the National Assembly by the interior minister, Sheikh Rasheed, in June 2021.

Initially the bill had no provision related to the filing of a false complaint or false information about subjecting a person to enforced disappearance. After amendment, a provision was added to the bill to declare it a penal offence punishable by up to five years imprisonment with a fine up to Rs500,000.

The proposed law provides for the insertion of a new section 52B in the PPC for defining an “enforced disappearance”.

It states: “The term enforced disappearance relates to illegal and without lawful authority arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by an agent of the State or by person or group of persons acting with the authorisation, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which places such a person outside the protection of the law.”

According to reports, more than 7,000 complaints of enforced disappearances have been reported in Pakistan since 2011.