Two women from the same family were allegedly detained and moved to an undisclosed location during a late-night raid in Hub Chowki, in what rights groups say is the latest case in a growing pattern of enforced disappearances involving Baloch women.
Family members said personnel of the Frontier Corps (FC), the Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) and intelligence agencies raided a house at around 3 a.m. on Saturday in the Ganjhi Ghot Daroo Hotel area.
The women were identified as 17-year-old Hairnisa Wahid and 27-year-old Hani. Relatives said they had received no information about where the two were taken, leaving the family “deeply distressed”.
The incident comes amid rising concern over a series of enforced disappearance cases involving Baloch women reported in recent months.
On 18 December, CTD personnel allegedly raided a house in the Daroo Hotel area of Zehri Ghot, Hub Chowki, detaining a woman, Hazra, along with her two-year-old son Brahmdag. Their whereabouts remain unknown.
Earlier this month, on 1 December, a woman named Farzana Zehri was allegedly forcibly disappeared by security personnel while returning from a hospital in Khuzdar. Another woman, Raheema, was detained along with her brother in Dalbandin and remains missing.
On 22 November, a 15-year-old girl, Nasreen (Nasreena) Baloch, was allegedly taken by FC personnel and unidentified armed men during a night raid in the same Hub Chowki locality. Her family said around 15 armed individuals broke into their home, vandalised belongings, locked relatives in a room and took her away. She has not been produced before any authority.
In May, Mahjabeen Baloch, a student with disabilities at the University of Balochistan, was detained by CTD personnel during a 3 a.m. raid on her hostel. Her whereabouts also remain unknown.
The Baloch Women Forum (BWF) said the rising number of such cases indicated “a rapidly intensifying trend most likely under a state policy”, arguing that Baloch women were increasingly being “dragged into the shameful practice of enforced disappearance”.
The organization said the pattern constituted “a direct violation of Baloch cultural norms”, comparing the state’s behaviour to “colonial-era practices” in which indigenous people faced collective punishment and cultural violations.
BWF said the trend represented an attack on indigenous social structures and warned that ignoring such cases would only embolden further abuses. “Such crimes are reciprocal — if we do not resist them from the root, they will curb us from the root,” the group said.
The forum called on national and international human rights observers to intervene and hold responsible institutions to account for what it described as “heinous practices” in Balochistan. It demanded the immediate recovery of the women allegedly disappeared in Hub Chowki, along with “all other illegally detained Baloch men and women”.