After eight years: Gohram Bugti reaches home

Security personnel escort caravan of IDPs carrying body of demonstrator.

QUETTA:

The grandson of the late Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Bugti and leader of Jamhoori Watan Party (JWP) Gohram Bugti reached his ancestral town Dera Bugti on Thursday along with 100 internally displaced Bugti tribesmen.

Gohram is the first member of the Bugti family who has reached Dera Bugti since the military operation in 2006, in which Nawab Akbar Bugti along with 30 other companions were killed.

For the first time after the military operation, the custody of the historic fort of Bugti Tumandar was handed over to Gohram and opened for family members of the deceased chieftain.

Gohram had earlier staged a sit-in for 88 consecutive days in Islamabad and called off the same in the wake of assurances by the federal government.

He reached Quetta on Wednesday, before leaving for Dera Bugti, and then reached Sui via Jacobabad and Kashmore.

Assistant commissioner of Sui and other local Bugti tribesmen welcomed the displaced families in Sui.

The caravan of internally displaced persons, comprising 70 to 80 vehicles, was escorted by Levies personnel. The caravan was also carrying the body of Gul Sher Bugti, who had died in Islamabad during the protests.

Following the 2006 military operation, the Bugti fort was controlled by security forces, however, Levies sources said that the fort had been vacated by security forces and the authority of the fort had been given to Nawab Bugti’s family by the local administration on Tuesday.

A few years earlier, Mir Aali Bugti, another grandson of Akbar Bugti, had reached Sui but could not travel onward to Dera Bugti due to poor law and order there.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2013.