On the night of September 7, in Narmuk Shesha Dagar, Kalat, Pakistani military forces conducted a fake encounter, raiding the home of two brothers, Ismail and Muhammad Abbas Lehri. They were taken from their home and, in front of their mother, were murdered a short distance away, with their bodies later discarded in a desolate area.
The mother of Ismail and Muhammad Abbas, while speaking to a journalist, revealed the facts, saying, “I held the feet of the military personnel and pleaded with them to take my sons to the police station if they had done anything wrong and present them in court. If proven guilty, they should be punished, but the oppressors snatched my sons from my arms, took them a little distance away, killed them, and dumped their bodies.”
This heart-wrenching incident of children being murdered in front of their mother in Kalat is not the first of its kind. The Pakistani military has been involved in extrajudicial killings of forcibly disappeared individuals in fake encounters in Balochistan. On August 13, 2020, in Turbat city, Frontier Corps personnel had similarly killed Hayat Baloch in front of his parents.
Following deadly attacks by Baloch armed organizations fighting for freedom on Pakistani and Chinese economic and military targets, there has been an increase in incidents where forcibly disappeared individuals or youths abducted from their homes are killed and labeled as militants.
Statements by Pakistan’s military chief, Asim Munir, Pakistan’s Prime Minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and Balochistan’s controversial Chief Minister, as well as resolutions in the assembly, clearly show that efforts to suppress the rising resistance politics in Balochistan through military operations and detention centers will continue. However, previous attempts to curb Baloch resistance by killing forcibly disappeared individuals and using detention centers have failed, and future efforts are unlikely to be successful either.