Dr Aafia’s plight

AS one more case of mysterious disappearance hits the newspaper lines, the nation is shocked to know that the victims happen to be an eminent behavioural neuroscientist and her three US-born children. They had gone missing from Karachi in 2003, and the US only acknowledged this week that Dr Aafia Siddiqui, holding a degree in biology from MIT and a doctorate in behavioural neuroscience from Brandeis University, was under detention. But the story of the circumstances, the timing and the place from where she had been picked up that the Americans purveyed for the world to believe hardly sounds credible. It has been roundly denied by her family and attorney.