In a modest home in Killi Saleh Abad, Sameer Baloch, 18, sat quietly as visitors continued to arrive to offer condolences for a loss that has altered his life in an instant.
Days after his mother’s killing, the stream of mourners has not stopped, reflecting the respect she commanded in life and the shock her death has left behind.
While people spoke of his mother, Police Constable Malik Naz Baloch, as a brave, dutiful and fearless officer, for her son she was simply the person who made sure he and his siblings could go to school while working in one of Pakistan’s most volatile and poorest regions.
“Today what I am is because of my mother and despite the vulnerable security situation in Khuzdar, she was working for our education,” the 18-year-old told Arab News over the phone from his hometown of Khuzdar.
Naz, a 35-year-old mother of three, was killed on April 19 during a police shootout with armed militants in Bajoi, a mountainous area about 35 kilometers from Khuzdar city. She is the first woman police officer in Balochistan’s history to be killed in such an encounter.
Militant attacks frequently target security forces in Pakistan, particularly in southwestern Balochistan province where a long-running insurgency has intensified in recent years. However, the killing of a female police officer is rare. Women make up a small proportion of the country’s police forces and are less often deployed in frontline or high-risk operations.
On the morning of the attack, Naz left for work without waking her children. It was a Sunday and she chose to let them sleep. This small, ordinary act later took on an unbearable weight.
Hours passed without her usual call from the police station.
“I was worried because I didn’t see my mother in the morning,” Baloch said. “I called her but her number was switched off and in the afternoon a policeman came and took us to the hospital where we found my mother’s dead body.”
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack that killed Naz and Head Constable Sami Ullah, but ethnic Baloch separatist groups have often targeted police and security forces in the province.
Naz had joined the Balochistan Levies local policing force, now merged into the provincial police, in April 2013 after her husband Abdul Ghani, also a Levies member, was killed in an attack in 2011.
According to Khuzdar police, a team of about 20 personnel, including women constables, had gone to Bajoi, an area considered sensitive due to the presence of militants, following a complaint about the theft of solar panels, inverters and cables.
During the raid, the police team encountered armed militants.
“They challenged the police party to surrender their arms but our soldiers refused and responded in their defense,” said Abdul Qudus Dehwar, an additional superintendent of police in Khuzdar.
“As a result of the shoot-out, senior lady constable Malik Naz and head constable Sami Ullah were killed on the spot and three other soldiers, including another female constable, were injured.”
Dehwar described Naz as a “highly responsible and committed officer” who often took the lead in operations alongside other women personnel.
“There is no doubt that Malik Naz Baloch and the injured female soldier are role models for the entire police department,” he said.
Back at her home, where a somber quiet hangs over the neighborhood, Naz’s son recalled that his mother had been injured twice in past operations but continued working for the sake of her children.
“We used to be concerned about my mother’s safety whenever she went out for her policing responsibilities, but she never expressed fear in front of us,” Baloch, a 10th-grader, told Arab News. “After my father’s murder Malik Naz Baloch raised us like a father.”