The Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances revealed Wednesday that 135 ‘missing persons’ cases were disposed of in October. Out of this total, 17 cases were cleared because they were not considered to be cases of enforced disappearance.

The 118 cases that were actually traced included 113 people who were not only found but also reunited with their families.

One person each was traced to a jail and to an internment center. In the remaining three cases, the individuals bodies were recovered.

However, even with 135 cases being cleared in a single month, the report revealed that there are still 2,210 people missing that the commission is trying to locate.

The commission also revealed that it had received 128 new cases in the month of October alone. A big chunk of the new cases came from a list of over 5,000 people submitted by the Balochistan National Party-Mengal to the commission.

On September 9, the then law minister Azam Nazeer Tarar had told the Islamabad High Court that these cases had piled up over a period of 20 years. “It will not be resolved within 10 days,” a news reports had quoted him from the court.

The court had summoned Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif himself on the same day so he could take the court into confidence about the measures his government was taking to solve this issue. IHC Chief Justice Athar Minallah had called enforced disappearances ‘the highest form of torture’.

On the other hand, in July the Public Accounts Committee recommended that the commission’s chairman Justice (retired) Javed Iqbal be removed from the position due to gross misconduct in relation to the Tayyaba Gul Case. Justice (r) Iqbal has headed the commission since its inception in 2011. In that duration, a total of 6,825 cases of enforced disappearances were resolved.