KARACHI: Another camp for the missing has come up outside the Karachi Press Club. The camp, which has been there for over a month, belongs to the family of an advocate and activist of the Balochistan National Movement, Kachkol Ali, and the one who has gone missing is Ali’s 21-year-old son, Nabeel Baloch.

According to Mohammad Wahab, a representative of the Baloch Rights Council, Nabeel went missing in Lyari’s Jhatpat Market on Aug 30. “He was at the market with his sister when men in a vehicle picked him up. He is a resident of Garden West.”

Nabeel’s sister Mahpara, who is on a hunger strike at the moment, said: “There were two men in white shalwar kameez and a police officer in uniform who pushed my brother into a white car, which had no registration plate. I raised a lot of hue and cry and a large crowd also gathered round me but the men succeeded in taking him away.”

She said the family first went to the Chakiwara police station for the registration of an FIR but the police officials refused to file it on the pretext that the crime did not take place within their jurisdiction.

“They asked us to go to the Kalakot police station where the police officers said the Rangers might have picked up Nabeel in connection with the ongoing operation in Karachi.

“We approached the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan who sent an application, attached with another one written by my family, to the Rangers, IGP of Sindh, the home secretary and SHOs of both the Chakiwara and Kalakot police stations. But nothing happened,” she said.

The family then filed a petition in the Sindh High Court on Sept 6. There had been two hearings up till to date, said Wahab.

“On Sept 24th the judge asked the Rangers to recover the missing 21-year-old. The DG Rangers recently filed an application that Nabeel is not with them. The SHC has given more time till Oct 16 to the authorities concerned to recover Nabeel,” he said.

Advocate Kachkol Ali took asylum in Norway in 2010 after receiving ‘death threats’ while representing three Baloch activists, Lala Munir, Sher Mohammad and Ghulam Mohammad who were later found murdered in Turbat, according to his family. Nabeel is the youngest of his three sons.

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2014