Daily Times

KARACHI: Two Karachi University (KU) students who belonged to Baluchistan’s Khuzdar district were reported abducted from their residence on Thursday.

Rights activists say that based on their preliminary investigations it appeared that Mumtaz Sajidi, a final year student in the International Relations Department, and his younger brother Kamran Sajidi, who recently got enrolled in a bachelors’ programme, were taken away by a team with some men wearing police uniforms and others in plainclothes. The kidnapping apparently took place early in the morning at the brothers’ residence at Madu Goth near KU main campus.

After Thursday’s incident, the number of Baluch students of KU forcibly disappeared in the past few months has moved to seven, according to statistics compiled by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP).

On November 20 last year, Sagheer Baluch, a second-year student in the Political Science Department, was taken away from a canteen near the Visual Studies Department. Witnesses said that several persons showed up in a car and two motorbikes and whisked him away. Earlier last year, four KU students identified as Naseer, Hassan, Rafiq and Sanaullah were similarly taken up from the University Road area.

HRCP vice chairman (Sindh) Asad Iqbal Butt strongly condemned the latest incident.

“There was a time when law enforcement and intelligence personnel were more savvy about enforced disappearances. They didn’t wear uniforms while on such missions but now they are going about such kidnappings in a brazen manner,” Butt said, speaking to Daily Times.

“It seems as if they don’t fear any authority anymore,” he said.

Butt said an application had been filed with the police and hoped that a case would be registered very soon.

Haji Iqbal, who has the acting charge of the office of the SHO at Gulistan-e-Jauhar, however, said that no one had yet approached the police with a request for registration of FIR.

“It is yet to be ascertained who picked up them and why. Someone from the CTD [Counter Terrorism Department] or the CIA [Crimes Investigation Agency] could have been behind the incident as our thana’s personnel have no about it,” he said. He said they would register a case if the family of the brothers approached the police.

Regarding the cases of students reportedly forcibly disappeared last year, Butt said Saghere’s sister Hameeda and HRCP were jointly following up on the matter. However, there had been no progress in police investigation. He said the HRCP had also approached families of Kamran and Mumtaz to start legal proceedings in those cases.

Mumtaz Sajidi’s friends told the media on Thursday that he was recently active in a campaign to seek safe recovery of Baluch students taken away last year. They said he had no links with any separatist organisation. He was active in co-curricular activities on campus.

Sagheer Baloch, who hailed from Awaran district, had joined Karachi University in 2016 on a reserved seat. He had cleared his matriculation from Khuzdar and passed his intermediate exams from a college in Quetta.

Speaking to Daily Times, Sagheer’s sister Hameeda Qadir says that he was involved in no political or militant activity. “He was a brilliant student and was also one of his department’s best debaters,” she said.

Qadir said that based on the accounts of witnesses the personnel who picked him up seemed to be from a security agency.

When contacted, KU Registrar Munawwer Rasheed surprisingly expressed ignorance about any of the recent incidents in which Baluch students were picked up from or around the campus. “The inquiry reports of the campus security supervisor and the police do not contain any such information,” he said.

Published in Daily Times, January 5^th 2018.