Missing lawyer’s body found in Khuzdar

Chief justice of the BHC has taken suo motu notice of the kidnappings.

QUETTA: The body of another kidnapped lawyer, Ali Sher Kurd, was found from a desolate area in Khuzdar, some 300 kilometers southeast of Quetta, late on Thursday night.

Ali Sher was abducted from Quetta city three days ago.

According to official sources, some passers-by spotted the body near Ibraim Road in Khuzdar and informed the police. The body was taken to the Divisional Headquarters Hospital in Khuzdar for autopsy. It was identified because of a letter addressed to the deceased lawyer found inside his clothes.

“The victim received a single bullet in his forehead which exited his skull,” Dr Sumar Khan told The Express Tribune via phone. He said the body bore marks of torture.

Lawyers and activists of the Baloch Students Organisation (BSO) arrived at the hospital soon after they were informed about the body and staged a protest.

Protesters blocked the RCD Highway, disrupting traffic between Quetta and Karachi for several hours.

Officials have said that 16 bullet-riddled bodies have so far been found in Balochistan since July 24 this year. All of them were killed in a similar manner.

The lawyer’s body was found on the eve of Balochistan Bar Association’s province-wide protests calling for his safe recovery.

“We were staging a strike for the safe recovery of Ali Sher Kurd and Mir Ahmed Mirwani. After this incident, we will intensify our protest,” bar association president Baz Mohammad Kakar said. He said this was the second incident in which a lawyer had been brutally murdered.

“Lawyer Mirwani is still missing and under such circumstances there is a possibility that the culprits will (also) dump his body soon without the fear of punishment,” he added.

Kakar said that family members of kidnapped lawyers believe that the lawyers had been kept hostage by personnel of security forces and intelligence agencies and they were the ones who had killed him. “If these institutions are not involved in hostage-taking, they must clarify their positions because it is their prime responsibility to ensure the safety of life and property of the people,” he said.

Lawyers in Balochistan have been protesting against the killings for the past two months.

Two of the three kidnapped lawyers, Munir Ahmed Mirwani, Zaman Mari and Ali Sher Kurd, have been found. Munir Ahmed has been missing for the past three months and police are yet to trace his whereabouts.

Earlier, the bullet-riddled body of Zaman Marri was found from Mastung. He was kidnapped from Quetta on July 19.

The Chief Justice of the Balochistan High Court also took a suo motu notice of the lawyers’ kidnappings but no progress has been made to date.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 25^th, 2010.