In Balochistan’s Musa Khel district, four men reported missing were allegedly killed in what rights groups are calling a “fake encounter” staged by Pakistan’s Counter Terrorism Department (CTD).
On November 3, the CTD said it had conducted an operation on the national highway near Rarasham, where a joint team of CTD, Frontier Corps (FC), and law enforcement officers engaged in a firefight with “terrorists” allegedly attempting to blockade the highway.
According to CTD officials, three suspects were killed in the shootout, with two others arrested and several weapons recovered from the scene.
However, human rights groups and family members identified three of those killed as previously missing individuals, alleging they had been forcibly disappeared by Pakistani forces in recent months.
According to reports, Muhammad Nawaz Buzdar, a resident of Barag Pusht, was detained on September 10 in Loralai, while Ghulam Buzdar was taken from Buzdar Petrol Pump in Rarasham on October 2. The third victim, identified as Jafar Marri, was detained around the same period.
Meanwhile, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), an advocacy group, condemned the incident in a statement on X, calling it part of a “disturbing trend of extrajudicial killings” targeting forcibly disappeared Baloch individuals.
“The Baloch nation has been resisting these heinous, systematic, and targeted killings of forcibly disappeared individuals, yet this brutal practice remains unchecked,” read the BYC statement. The group urged the public to demand accountability and an end to what it described as “an ongoing genocide.”
It should be noted that the CTD has gained notoriety for its “fake encounters” in Balochistan, with activists and Baloch nationalists dubbing it the “encounter specialists of Balochistan.”
Last year, the CTD’s reported killing of a detained young man in a “fake encounter” in Turbat led to significant protests, including a long march led by Baloch activist Dr. Mahrang Baloch from Quetta to Islamabad.
Human rights organizations have consistently called on Pakistani authorities to investigate these alleged extrajudicial killings and prosecute those responsible, yet incidents involving the killing of Baloch missing persons in “fake encounters” reportedly continue unabated.