The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday told the Supreme Court that they are taking all positive steps, including repeatedly writing to the Pakistan government, to ascertain the whereabouts of a 29-year-old Mumbai engineer who went missing from Peshawar two years ago.

Representing the MEA, Additional Solicitor General Neeraj Kishan Kaul said even after September 2014, when according to the youth Hamid Ansari's lawyer Arvind Kumar Sharma an affidavit was filed in the Peshawar High Court, the local police has claimed that they have arrested the youth for illegally crossing over to Pakistan.

Sharma told the court that Ansari has already been traced by Pakistan and now the Indian government should expedite efforts to bring him back. Thursday's court hearing brings a ray of hope to Fauzia Nehal Ansari (56), Hamid's mother, who has been running from pillar to post for the past oneand-half years to ascertain his whereabouts.

Hamid had left Mumbai for Kabul to attend an aviation sector job interview and had later crossed over to Pakistan on October 10, 2012 before becoming untraceable.

Sharma told the court that they submitted several representations to the MEA and National Human Rights Commission and also wrote e-mails to Indian High Commissions in Pakistan and Kabul and several human rights organisations there but they did not serve any purpose.

The mother had got information via Facebook that Hamid was in contact with few Pakistani friends through the Internet and in fact had got close with a Pakistani girl. "We also got to know from Facebook that the girl was facing family pressure to marry another person against her will and so she sought Ansari's help", she said. As a result, he crossed over from Afghanistan border via Jalalabad to Peshawar in Pakistan illegally.

Source: IT