QUETTA: Lawyers are a crucial force for justice in Quetta. So when a bomb decimated Balochistan’s legal class this week, it left a vacuum that some say will never be filled. The province has been plagued by roiling insurgencies, hit by regular militant attacks, and run by political leaders widely seen as corrupt. Balochistan is the deadliest province in Pakistan for local journalists, according to Amnesty International. Lawyers are the only people shining a spotlight on the province’s many problems. Lawyers have been in the firing line before, but Monday’s massive attack was unprecedented in scale. Some 200 members of Quetta’s close-knit legal community had come to the provincial capital’s hospital to mourn the fatal shooting hours earlier of a prominent colleague. “We have lost the whole leadership,” said Attaullah Langov, a former secretary of the Balochistan Bar Association. The loss is a hole “that cannot be filled,” he told AFP. Below are profiles of five victims who played a leading role in Balochistan’s civic life. Activist Sunghat Jamaldini was a member of the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan who had played an active role highlighting the plight of missing people in Balochistan. Jamaldini also fought for women’s rights. Mahmoon Hamdard, a cameraman for a private TV channel, grew up in a slum outside Quetta, starting his career as a guard for a private security company where he was posted to the office of the TV channel. Fascinated by journalism, he badgered staff to join the editorial team, working his way up to the position of cameraman as he tried to finish his studies. Lawyer Adnan Kasi passed his bar exam in London in the early 2000s, becoming the youngest head of the Principal Law College in Quetta, where he introduced several reforms, including measures to combat nepotism and cheating. Kasi was running for the position of secretary in the Balochistan Bar Association elections, scheduled for August 13. Lawyer Baz Mohammad Kakar was one of the first Baloch leaders of the lawyers movement to pledge his loyalty to former chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. Kakar, a Supreme Court advocate, had spearheaded the movement in the province for two years. Abdul Rasheed Khokhar was a popular senior lawyer who was close friends with many in the lawyers movement against Musharraf. The impact he had was aptly demonstrated by the crowd at his funeral beneath a scorching Balochistan sun Tuesday.