Two years after being declared ‘unclaimed’ and buried following a controversial encounter with the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), the body of Abdul Qayyum Zehri has been identified by his family. Abdul Qayyum Zehri, a resident of Zehri Khuzdar, Balochistan, was reportedly forcibly disappeared by Pakistani Security Forces in November 2020.
Zehri’s family only recently discovered his fate, with news reaching them through media outlets, rather than official channels. Zehri’s body had been transported to Quetta Civil Hospital, declared ‘Unclaimed’, and subsequently buried in 2021 without his family’s knowledge.
This revelation comes in the wake of a similar identification of Nasir Jan Qambrani, who disappeared from the Zehri area of Khuzdar in early 2021. Qambrani’s body was also identified and exhumed only recently, and has since been returned to his grieving family.
In August 2021, the CTD sent a letter to local authorities, including DC Khuzdar and DC Awaran, stating that Nasir Farooq, Ghulam Jan, Abdul Qayyum, and Kamal Khan were killed in an encounter. However, details of the encounter were not provided to the families, and the bodies were declared unclaimed and buried with the assistance of the Edhi Foundation, leaving families uninformed for two years.
The relatives of these individuals claim that they received no official communication about their loved ones’ fate and received no timely information from the authorities.
These incidents have once again drawn attention to Dasht Tera Meel, a burial site for hundreds of ‘unclaimed’ bodies. According to prominent Baloch political and social activists, many of these individuals are victims of forced disappearances, with their bodies often delivered to hospitals in a mutilated state. They further claim that the authorities neglect crucial identification procedures, such as DNA testing, which would help establish the identities of these deceased individuals.