An agonising wait: Missing Baloch leader’s wife demands recovery

Asks UN, SC to help trace BSO-A chairperson Zahid Baloch.

ISLAMABAD: The wife of Baloch Students Organisation-A (BSO-A) chairperson Zahid Baloch, who went missing earlier this year, has said she will go to any length to find her husband.

Zarjan travelled all the way from Khuzdar to Islamabad to share her ordeal with the media and raise her voice for the release of her husband at the National Press Club.



She said her husband was picked up on March 18 this year from Satellite Town, Quetta in the presence of BSO-A members, including its senior vice-president Kareema Baloch and dozens of other people.

Accusing the Frontier Corps (FC) and security agencies of kidnapping her husband, Zarjan said her whole family was looking forward for Baloch’s release.

She said they have approached every individual in a position of power to trace Baloch but to no avail. “After his disappearance, we have been running from pillar to post. The FC has refused to acknowledge that my husband is in their custody,” Zarjan remarked.

She said her family has visited Sariab Police Station in Quetta a number of times but they allegedly refused to register a case against the agencies.

“I filed a petition in the Balochistan High Court which directed the police to register a case,” she said, adding even after the high court’s orders, the police were reluctant to register an FIR.

Zarjan said if her husband was guilty and had committed any wrongdoing, he must be brought to book under the Constitution. “Present him in court, prove the charges and then whatever punishment he deserves, award him that. Why keep the whole family under persistent pain and misery,” she remarked sobbingly.

Zarjan pleaded the government and media to help her end the misery of not knowing where one’s loved one is.

Decrying the media’s role in covering issues of Balochistan in general and the missing persons in particular, Zarjan appealed to human rights organisations, the Supreme Court and the United Nations to help her find her husband.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 9^th, 2014.