Quetta, July 6 (IANS) Five tortured dead bodies of Baloch men were recovered from Balochistan’s Gwadar district, with families and rights groups alleging that at least four had been forcibly disappeared months earlier, local media reported.

Pakistani military officials, however, said that the five were armed men killed in an operation launched following Friday’s vehicle-borne attack by the Baloch Liberation Army’s Majeed Brigade on a Pakistan Coast Guards camp in the Panwan area of Jiwani in Gwadar.

The Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons (VBMP), activists, journalists, and relatives of the deceased rejected the official version, citing documented cases of the men’s disappearances and earlier protests by their families before the operation took place, The Balochistan Post reported.

The deceased were identified as Abdul Haq, Peeri Assa, Shah Bakhsh, and Haider Ali Mohammad, while the identity of the fifth person was not immediately known.

Meanwhile, Paank, the Baloch National Movement’s Human Rights Department, on Monday strongly condemned the recovery of five tortured bodies from Panwan area in Jiwani on July 4, raising grave concerns over enforced disappearance, torture, and extrajudicial killings across Balochistan.

Paank revealed that Abdul Haq Baloch, principal of Memar-e-Nau Academy in Gwadar, was extrajudicially killed by Pakistani forces. After months of enforced disappearance, it said, his tortured body was recently recovered in Jiwani along with others.

Condemning the killing of Abdul Haq Baloch, human rights body Baloch Voice for Justice (BVJ) said that this is not an isolated incident but reflects a systematic pattern in which enforced disappearance is followed by the recovery of mutilated bodies.

“This practice has become a defining feature of the ongoing campaign of Baloch genocide, where families are subjected to prolonged uncertainty, psychological torture, and irreversible loss,” it added.

Furthermore, the BYC said that the 28-year-old fisherman Peeri Assa was brutally tortured and killed on July 4 by Pakistani forces following months of his enforced disappearance.

According to the rights body, Assa was forcibly taken from his home in the Jiwani region of Gwadar during a late-night raid on January 6. From that day onward, it said, his whereabouts remained unknown.

“The killing of Peeri Assa adds another name to the growing list of victims. It is clear that he will not be the last, as for decades Baloch people have endured state atrocities, repeatedly receiving the broken and tortured bodies of their loved ones,” the BYC stated.

Additionally, the body of 33-year-old fisherman Shah Bakhsh Umar was recovered in Jiwani on July 4 bearing extensive signs of abuse after nearly six months of enforced disappearance.

“Shah Bakhsh Umar’s killing also exposes the repeated practice of presenting victims of enforced disappearance as militants following security incidents in Balochistan. Whenever security failures occur, the bodies of previously disappeared Baloch are frequently produced and labeled as terrorists in an attempt to justify their deaths,” the BYC stated.

–IANS

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