A young Baloch woman who was allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted by Pakistani forces in Balochistan’s Panjgur district has died from her injuries, local sources and human rights groups confirmed on Thursday.
The woman, identified as Nazia Shafi, had been receiving treatment at Panjgur Civil Hospital after being brought in a semi-conscious state. She succumbed to her injuries on Thursday night, while her mother, Pari, remains under medical care.
The two women were reportedly detained by Pakistani armed forces during a raid in the Panchi area of Panjgur on 28 October. Sources told The Balochistan Post that they were subjected to “brutal torture,” and that the daughter was sexually assaulted before both were left at the hospital in critical condition.
Local residents said the mother and daughter were originally from Mashkel and had moved to Panjgur with their family for work.
“They were taken from their home during the night,” one resident told The Balochistan Post. “The next morning, the daughter was dumped outside the hospital and later died.”
Pakistani authorities have not issued any public statement regarding the incident. Hospital officials declined to comment when contacted by The Balochistan Post.
The Human Rights Council of Balochistan (HRCB) had earlier condemned the assault, calling it “a shocking example of the impunity and moral collapse that define state operations in Balochistan.”
“The sheer brutality of this act is beyond comprehension — targeting women through abduction, torture, and sexual violence exposes the moral collapse and impunity that define state operations in Balochistan,”
the HRCB said in a statement on X.
The group urged the government to conduct “an immediate, independent investigation” and hold the perpetrators accountable, warning that such crimes are becoming systematic across Balochistan.
Following Nazia’s death, the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) described the incident as part of a “systematic policy of collective punishment against Baloch women.”
In a detailed statement issued on Friday, the group said:“Pakistani security forces forcibly disappeared Nazia Shafi and her mother, residents of Panchi, a remote area in Panjgur, on October 28. While in illegal custody, the victims were subjected to severe torture, and Nazia was sexually assaulted. She was later found unconscious and critically injured at the District Headquarters Hospital and succumbed to her injuries the following evening.”
The BYC said the incident reflects a “systematic pattern of state violence” against Baloch women, citing similar cases including Safia Bibi, who was allegedly abducted during a raid in Zehri, Khuzdar, and Mahjabeen Baloch, a university student forcibly disappeared from her hostel in Quetta earlier this year.
The group appealed to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC), the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (WGEID), and the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls to investigate the case and press Pakistan to end what it described as “enforced disappearances, torture, and gender-based violence” in Balochistan.
“Justice for Nazia Shafi, her mother, and all Baloch women is both a moral and legal obligation of the international community,” the statement added.
The BYC Panjgur zone also condemned the killing, describing it as an assault on “Baloch honour and national dignity.”
In a statement, it said, “The martyrdom of Nazia Shafi proves that the state and its hired assassins, by violating the sanctity of home and veil, are now attacking the very lives of Baloch women. Silence within the Baloch nation at this moment would be equivalent to collective suicide of national honour.”
Prominent Baloch rights activist and BYC leader Dr. Sabiha Baloch linked the incident to a wider colonial pattern of gendered violence.
Quoting Frantz Fanon’s A Dying Colonialism, she wrote, “For colonial power, the woman’s body becomes a battlefield; through her, the conqueror seeks to dominate the whole society.”
Dr. Sabiha said Nazia’s death was “not only about one young woman’s death.” “When women in oppressed regions are targeted under the guise of ‘security,’ it is the entire nation that is attacked,” she said.
“Violence against women is not collateral damage; it is a weapon of control. It tells us, again and again, that what is done to one body is done to all of us. The words of Nazia’s story will echo as a question to every conscious individual: whose security demands the body and blood of its own daughters?”