Two bullet-riddled bodies recovered in Quetta

QUETTA: The bullet-riddled corpses of two missing persons were found here on Friday, raising the body count to six since June 2010. The bodies were recovered from the Killi Khali area on the Brewery Road.

Officials said that the hands and feet of both victims were bound by rope. The corpses were taken to the Bolan Medical Teaching Hospital for autopsy. Both men had been shot in the head and their bodies bore clear marks of torture, a doctor told The Express Tribune.

One of the men was identified as Bahar Khan Bangulzai who had been missing for the past two months. “My son was taken away by personnel of security agencies from Ghahi Khan Chowk in Quetta on June 31,” Bhar’s father Baig Mohammad Bangulzai said. “I, along with my son, had just stepped out from a passenger bus when the security personnel took him away in a vehicle and vanished.”

Baig Mohammad, a local shopkeeper, said the incident took place near a Frontier Corps (FC) check post. He claimed that the kidnappers had been “talking frankly” with the FC personnel before kidnapping his son. Baig further said he had filed a petition in the Balochistan High Court and registered a case in the police station concerned, nominating security agencies for taking his son hostage.

Relatives of the two missing men rushed to the hospital when they heard the news about the recovery of more bodies. The other body, which has not been identified as yet, has been kept in the hospital morgue.

Over the past two months police have recovered six bullet-riddled bodies of missing persons, including the two recovered on Friday. The men have been identified as Najeebullah, Ashfaq Mullazai, Farooq Mengal, Faiz Mohammad and Bahar Khan Bangulzai.

The head of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, Nasrullah Baloch, said that although several cases had been registered in the Supreme Court, no missing person had so far been traced. “The judiciary is not playing its due role in protecting the lives of the citizens. We have received six bodies and it is possible that other missing persons were also tortured to death,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 7^th, 2010.