Pak journalist kidnapped for aiding jailed Indian rescued after 2 years

A Pakistani journalist who was kidnapped two years ago while pursuing the case of an Indian engineer jailed in Peshawar on espionage charges has been rescued, officials said.

Zeenat Shahzadi

Zeenat Shahzadi, a 26-year-old reporter of Daily Nai Khaber and Metro News TV channel, was allegedly kidnapped by unidentified men while she was on her way to work in an autorickshaw from her home in a populated locality of Lahore on 19 August 2015.

Shahzadi was believed to have "forcibly disappeared" while working on the case of Indian engineer Hamid Ansari, according to media reports.

The chief of Pakistan's Commission of Inquiry on Enforced Disappearances (CIED) Justice (retd) Javed Iqbal said on Friday evening that Shahzadi was rescued from an area along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border on Wednesday night.

Iqbal, the newly appointed National Accountability Bureau chief, told BBC Urdu that some non-state actors and enemy agencies had kidnapped her and she was recovered from them, adding that tribal elders in Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa played an important role in her recovery.

Hamid Ansari, a Mumbai-based engineer, was arrested on charges of illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan in 2012.

"Non-state actors and anti-state agencies had abducted her and she has been rescued from their custody," Iqbal said.

"Zeenat Shahzadi today has been reunited with her family in Lahore and we are happy for her safe recovery. I am thrilled that she is home safe," human rights activist Beena Sarwar said.

Grief-stricken over her kidnapping, Shahzadi's brother Saddam had committed suicide in March last year, making her disappearance the focus of headlines again.

"Helping an Indian prisoner - Hamid Ansari - in Pakistan has cost us dearly. My sister is missing and my younger brother (Saddam) who was deeply attached to her hanged himself after losing hope to get reunited with her," Salman Latif, Shahzadi's brother, had told PTI.

"My sister has not committed any crime in helping an Indian national," he said.

A global campaign had called for the rescue of Zeenat Shahzadi.

Two years ago, Shahzadi had filed an application with the Supreme Court's Human Rights Cell on behalf of Fauzia Ansari, the mother of Indian national Hamid Ansari, who had gone missing in Pakistan in November 2012. Her prodding had forced security agencies in Pakistan to admit that Ansari was in their custody.

Ansari, a Mumbai resident, was arrested in 2012 for illegally entering Pakistan from Afghanistan reportedly to meet a girl he had befriended online. He was sentenced to three years' imprisonment by a military court on charges of illegally entering Pakistan and 'spying'. He is still in jail.

"Zeenat received threats from unknown persons who asked her not to pursue the case. We also asked her not to put her life at risk but she said she wanted to help Ansari out of humanity. When she spoke to Ansari's mother she literally cried along with her and vowed to help," Latif said.

Human rights activists, especially former secretary general Human Rights Commission of Pakistan I A Rehman, have spoken for the release of Ansari, saying since he has served his sentence, he should be set free immediately.