Missing Persons: Body identified as Baloch nationalist Jalel Reki

The bodies, discovered two days ago, were identified on Thursday.

QUETTA:

Two bodies that had been found earlier this week in Mand have now been identified on Thursday as the well known Central Information Secretary of the Baloch Republican Party (BRP) Jalel Reki and a Baloch National Movement activist Mohammad Yunus.

The 32-year-old nationalist Reki was whisked away on February 13 2009 by a group of armed men, according to witnesses.

“The deceased persons were found shot dead in Kech district in the late hours of Tuesday. The victims were shot in the head and chest,” official sources said. The body of Yunus was handed over to his relatives and shifted to his ancestral town in Panjgur for burial. Reki’s body, which bore multiple marks of torture, was shifted to Quetta.

Reki’s father, Qadir Baloch, who had been on strike outside the Quetta press club for close to two years, was sitting at the strike camp when he was informed that his missing son’s body had been found. “It was obvious that I would one day receive the body of my son but I have no regret over the recovery of his bullet-riddled body. He has sacrificed his life for a great cause and the Baloch nation,” he told The Express Tribune as he left the camp. “Secret agencies and security personnel in uniform whisked away my son,” Baloch alleged.

Baloch added that an FIR was registered at Quetta’s Shalkot Police Station against the then inspector general of the Frontier Corps Major-General Saleem Nawaz and another security official for their alleged involvement in Reki’s disappearance from his residence.

Reki has left behind a widow, a five-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter.

BRP, led by self-exiled nationalist Brahmdug Bugti, has announced a three-day shutter-down strike and 40 days of mourning across Balochistan to condemn the killing of its leader. Shops and trading centres in Khuzdar, adjoining areas and some parts of Makran remained closed after news broke of the recovery of Reki’s body.

According to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VFBMP), 236 bodies have been found dumped in public places to date.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2011.