Concerns over the whereabouts of two Indian Sufi clerics in Pakistan, including the 80-year-old “Sajjadnashin” or head priest of Delhi’s Nizamuddin Dargah and his 65-year-old nephew grew on Friday, with no word from the Pakistani authorities 48 hours after they were allegedly taken into custody.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted on Friday morning, saying the government had “taken up this matter with Government of Pakistan and requested them for an update on both the Indian nationals (Syed Asif Ali Nizami and Nazim Ali Nizami) in Pakistan.”
The matter was taken up by both by the Ministry of External Affairs here and the Indian High Commission in Islamabad on Thursday.
Pakistan’s Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesperson Nafees Zakaria acknowledged receiving a ‘note verbale’ from India regarding events surrounding the two clerics, and told journalists that the Interior Ministry and “all relevant institutions are looking into the matter”.
According to the ‘note verbale’, details of which are available with The Hindu , Asif Nizami and Nazim Nizami travelled to Karachi on March 8 to visit a relative there and attend annual exchanges at the Data Darbar and other Sufi shrines in and around Lahore.
The relative, Syed Wazir Nizami, told officials that the two had flown to Lahore on March 14 with a return ticket for the next day.
However, when they reached the Lahore airport to take their return flight to Karachi on March 15, he received a call from a man who said that Nazim Nizami was being “detained” as some of his travel papers were “incorrect”. Asif Nizami then flew alone to Karachi and even called his relative after landing to say that he would be out soon. But he didn’t appear for hours, and when contacted, officials of the private airline, Shaheen Air that he had flown, said Asif Nizami too was “taken away” by a group of people, presumably officials.
Unnamed Pakistani officials quoted by local papers reportedly also raised the possibility that the clerics were “taken by militants”.
In recent months, there have been a growing number of attacks on Sufi shrines in the country as they are seen as moderate and even heretic by radical Islamic terror groups.
However, Indian officials were skeptical of the theory, maintaining that the two were clearly stopped by officials inside the Lahore and Karachi airports. “How can militants enter the airport?” asked an MEA official, while others questioned why their documents were even checked for domestic travel, suggesting that the government believes that the two men could even be in the custody of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.
