Baloch singer shot dead

Bullet-riddled body of famous Balochi and Brahvi folk singer was found in Kanak, Khuzdar district.

QUETTA: The bullet-riddled body of a famous Balochi and Brahvi folk singer was found in Kanak, Khuzdar district, on Monday.

Ali Jan Issazai and his student Shahzad Nadeem were abducted by a group of armed men from a roadside hotel in Quetta on January 10.

According to police, locals spotted the body in Kanak area within the limits of City Police Station, Khuzdar, and informed the police. The body was taken to a state-run hospital for autopsy. “The victim was hit a single bullet in the head and his body bore multiple marks of torture,” hospital sources told The Express Tribune. His hands were tied back with a rope and the body was handed over for burial to the heirs in Bisma.

Issazai’s family ruled out the possibility of the case being a kidnapping for ransom, saying that they were too poor to pay anyone.

Meanwhile, the Political Parties Coordination Committee (PPCC), comprising different political and religious parties and representatives of lawyers and traders, has demanded an immediate end to the military operation and extrajudicial killings of people in custody. The PPCC held a seminar at the Science College, Quetta, under the chairmanship of Asghar Achakzai of the Awami National Party (ANP).

The speakers said that incidents of target killings are on the rise and the government has so far failed to overcome this menace.

Political parties demanded that the government overcome power outages in Balochistan by building dams and storing water in different parts of Balochistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 1^st, 2011.