One missing Pak human rights activist returns home

Three weeks after he went missing, a Pakistani professor and prominent human rights activist has returned home, police said on Saturday.

Salman Haider, a professor at the Fatima Jinnah University and human rights activist, returned home late last night, Geo News reported quoting police officers.He had gone missing on January 6 when he was in the Bani Gala area with his friends and called his wife to tell her that he would return home by 8 pm.

When Salman, who was critical of the fundamentalists in the sensitive Muslim-majority nation did not return by 10 pm, his wife called him but his phone went unanswered, his brother Zeeshan Haider said.

His wife later received a text message from Salman's phone that asked her to pick his car from Coral Chowk, Zeeshan said.

Police had found the professor's car from Coral Chowk but no information about him.

A missing person's report for Salman was filed in Lohi Bher police station and an investigation was launched.

He was among four activists, others identified as Waqas Goraya, Asim Saeed and Ahmed Raza Naseer, who had gone missing this month. They had been accused of promoting blasphemy, a criminal offence in Pakistan.

A United Nations human rights expert on January 12 called on the Pakistani authorities to make it a top priority to locate and protect four disappeared human rights and social media campaigners, saying no government should tolerate attacks on its citizens.