Picked up: Families beg Rangers to let them meet loved ones

Around 18 men were picked up in a search operation in Baldia Town on March 30

KARACHI: A woman who hasn't seen her son since the Rangers allegedly picked him up in a raid was weeping at Karachi Press Club. "I don't have anything to say," she said. "Please let me meet my son."

According to Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) MNA Salman Mujahid Baloch, the woman's son was one of the 18 young men taken into custody allegedly by the Rangers during a search operation in Musharraf Colony in Baldia Town on March 30.

The families of these men were present with the MQM at the press club on Tuesday to request for meetings with their loved ones. "We demand that the families of the men who were picked should be able to meet them," he said. "No FIR has been registered against them and they have not been produced before the court in any case either."

While talking about what happened that night, a woman identified as Nida said that their residence was surrounded at 4am and the law enforcers demanded that the man of the house should step out immediately. "My brother went outside as my father is physically-challenged," she said. "The Rangers held a pistol to his head and just took him away. We tried to stop them but they just dragged and pulled my mother's hair," she claimed. She added that there was no reason for them to behave the way the did and insisted that her brother, Muhammad Pervaiz, was innocent.

A 14-year-old boy remembered the search operation vividly. He claimed the Rangers had blindfolded him and hit him when he asked why they had come to his house. "They took my father away," he said. "I am appealing to them right now to release my father."

Published in The Express Tribune, April 1^st, 2015.