On February 12, 2022, soldiers of the Pakistan army raided several houses in Teertej village of district Awaran and forcibly disappeared Mohammad Ali son of Dinar and his brother Wahid Dinar. The next night army officials summoned elders of the village and informed them that Mohammad Ali had died in their custody and he was buried outside the military camp, while Wahid Dinar was released in a critical condition.
The family of Mohammad Ali protested against his brutal killing in front of the army camp. The protestors demanded that the army should allow them to unearth the dead body so that they could bury him with dignity in accordance with religious rituals. The army officials denied their plea for hours and after the intervention of Assistant Commissioner Shahnawaz Baloch, women were allowed to unearth the body.
Later, Mohammad Ali was buried in a graveyard where his ancestors are buried in Teertej Awaran.
Mohammad Ali’s father, Dinar Baloch, pleaded to the human rights organizations to highlight the atrocities the army has inflicted on his family for years. In January 2014, three mass graves had been discovered from the Tootak area of Balochistan where 169 human remains were found buried. On the first day of exhumation of the human remains, the only person who was identified before the army sealed the site was Dinar’s nephew Naseer Baiyan. Naseer Baiyan and his brother Umer Baiyan had been whisked away by army personnel three months before the recovery of the mass grave. Umer Baiyan’s whereabouts and fate are unknown to date.
Later, in December 2020, when Dinar was visiting with his family in Hajiabad area of Balgathar in Panjgur district, the army bombed the village. Eight people of the same family including a child died while Dinar and several others were arrested. The detainees were released after being subjecting to inhuman torture for seven days.
Since the deployment of the army in district Awaran after the September 2013 earthquake, army personnel have been involved in serious crimes against humanity. However, the recent wave of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions seem to be in retaliation to Baloch militants’ attacks in Panjgur and Nushki on February 2, 2022. More than fifty people have been forcibly disappeared and six civilians killed by the army in a week.
