The dead body of a young girl was found near the Sabzi Road, Noorzai Chowk, in the provincial capital Quetta on Saturday. The dead body was moved to the civil hospital for identification and other routine procedures.
The identity of the girl has not been confirmed. It is also not clear how she was killed.
Finding dead bodies dumped in random places has become routine practice in Balochistan. Only a few days ago the Edhi workers had found six unclaimed dead bodies in Quetta. These bodies were buried in a cemetery in Quetta after no one came to claim them.
Rights activists, political workers and nationalist groups have their reservations regarding these unclaimed dead bodies. The health infrastructure of Balochistan is in shambles – modern medical procedures such as DNA testing are unavailable in civil hospitals. In most cases, the discovered dead bodies are mutilated and decomposed to such an extent that they are unrecognizable. In the absence of DNA testing, these dead bodies are labelled as unclaimed and buried. It is widely suspected that these might be the dead bodies of Baloch missing persons.
Once such grim revelation was made back in 2014 when more than 100 mutilated and decomposed dead bodies were found dumped in mass graves in Tootak. All those individuals were later confirmed to be Baloch missing persons who were allegedly detained by the Pakistani security forces from different areas of Balochistan. Such graves have been found in Dera Bugti and a few other places in Balochistan.
The random dead bodies are a direct antecedent of enforced disappearances, a major human rights violation in Balochistan According to modest estimates, the number of missing persons in Balochistan is in thousands. Baloch nationalists claim that the Pakistani security forces are behind these disappearances.
Enforced disappearances have seen a sudden uptick in Balochistan in the past few days. Tens of individuals have been apprehended from different areas, a handful of these have been released but the majority are yet to be released.
In district Kech, the Pakistani security forces forcefully detained an individual on Saturday and moved him to an unknown location. He was identified as Nabeel s/o Liaquat, a resident of the Gomzai area of Kech. He was reportedly detained by the security forces during a raid at his house.