‘nizamuddin dargah clerics held in isi custody over mQm links’
Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami, the two Sufi clerics from Delhi’s Nizamuddin Dargah, went to Pakistan on 8 March. They reportedly went missing from Lahore airport.
NEW DELHI: Two clerics from Delhi who went missing in Pakistan are “in (the) custody of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies, over their alleged links with the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain”, reported Press Trust of India on Saturday, quoting unnamed official sources.
Syed Asif Nizami and his nephew Nazim Nizami, the two Sufi clerics from Delhi’s Nizamuddin Dargah, went to Pakistan on 8 March. They reportedly went missing from Lahore airport, from where they were scheduled to fly to Karachi, a few days ago.
“The personnel of an intel- ligence took both the clerics into custody after getting them offloaded and shifted them to an undisclosed lo- cation for investigation,” the sources told PTI on the condition of anonymity. “They are being interrogated for their alleged links with Altaf’s partymen in Karachi,” the sources said, adding they will be freed if nothing is es- tablished against them.
The news comes a day after External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said Pakistan’s spy agency ISI likely abducted the two men. She said the Pakistani “hosts” of the khadims were “under pressure not to speak to the Indian High Commission”.
Hussain, the self- exiled leader of the MQM, has been living in London for the last 24 years. The MQM represents the Mohajir community that comprises Urdu- speaking Muslims who migrated from India to Pakistan during the Partition in 1947.
“Critics accuse Hussain of being a terrorist and fanatic. He has used his base in the UK to dial up and dial down street violence depending on political necessity, they allege,” wrote the British newspaper The Guardian, last year.
The Hazrat Nizamuddin shrine has close links with Data Darbar shrine of Gharib Nawaz, or Moinuddin Chisti, and “khadims” or custodians exchange visits every year. On Friday, Pakistan foreign ministry spokesperson Nafees Zakaria, when asked about the khadims, said they had “no clue” if the two had been found and that they were “proactively pursuing” the case.