Uzair Baloch in army custody, court informed

Prison authorities say army took him into their custody after it emerged that he was connected with Kulbhushan Jadhav

KARACHI: Prison authorities informed a district and sessions judge on Friday that the Lyari gang-war kingpin, Uzair Jan Baloch, was in the military custody and was not in prison.

They said that the army had recently taken him into their custody after it emerged that he was connected with the Indian spy, Kulbhushan Jadhav.

Submitting a report before the court, where his trial is pending in 19 different cases, the prison authorities said that the suspect was recently arrested under the Official Secrets Act of 1923.

The chief of the now defunct Peoples Aman Committee (PAC) was taken into custody by the Rangers from the outskirts of Karachi on January 29 last year.



He was booked and faced trials in at least 19 different criminal cases, pending trial before the district and sessions court set up inside the Karachi Central Prison.

However, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) had announced on April 12 that the army had taken custody of Uzair Jan Baloch on charges of espionage (leakage of sensitive security information to foreign intelligence agencies).

A serving Indian naval officer, Kulbhushan Jadhav, was sentenced to death by a military court after trial for his involvement in espionage and sabotage activities in Karachi and Balochistan.



Jadhav was taken into custody in March last year on allegations of supervising operatives of the Indian spy agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) in a bid to revive a dying insurgency by the Baloch nationalists in Balochistan and terrorism in Karachi.

One of his prime objectives was destabilising multi-billion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).