KARACHI: Three ‘missing’ Baloch activists, two of them belonging to the Marri tribe, were found shot dead in a deserted area of Abdullah Goth on Monday, said the Mochko police.

According to the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons, a Baloch rights group, one of the deceased was Amal Marri who had been taken away with his two brothers in Quetta a couple of years ago.

City SSP Sheeraz Nazeer said only two of the bodies were identified with the help of chits recovered from the pockets of the deceased. All the bodies were trussed up, he added.

One of them was a bearded man, identified as Abdul Rehman Marri, while a chit recovered from the pocket of another deceased was inscribed with the name Najeebullah, aged around 30 years.

The other body remained unidentified, according to the police.

However, Abdul Qadeer Baloch of the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons told Dawn that the third deceased was Amal Marri.

The City SSP said circumstantial evidence indicated that they had been kidnapped before being brought there and gunned down. “Police investigators have seized three cartridges fired with 0.9mm pistol from the crime scene,” he said.

The officer said the police were not yet sure if the deceased were the ‘missing’ persons or not.

He said several bodies had been found in the vicinity in the recent past. Four bodies bearing gunshot wounds had been spotted in the deserted area some four months ago, he said, adding that it later emerged during investigation that all of them had been killed over some personal enmity.

Two more persons were found dead there, but their bodies were decomposed and could not be identified, the police officer said.

However, the head of the Baloch rights group stated: “All the three deceased persons were missing Baloch”, insisting that he has a picture of Abdul Rehman Marri on the list of missing persons.

The Marri had been taken away with his brothers, Ali Jan and Mohammed Umer, said Abdul Qadeer Baloch, better known as Mama Qadeer. He added that two of the Marri brothers were still missing.

They had been taken away around two to three years ago, he said.

About Amal Marri, the rights activist said, he had been taken away from Hub Chowki some three to four months ago, while Najeebullah had been taken away from Makran. “Their fault was that they were all Baloch,” said Mr Qadeer.

He said: “Dozens of missing Baloch persons have been found murdered in Malir, Rais Goth, Mochko and Baldia areas of Karachi.”

“We lodged protest against the kidnapping and murder of these missing persons,” he said, adding that the kidnapping and killing of Baloch people stopped only for a brief period.

He said the rights group would display pictures of all the three deceased missing Baloch at the protest camp set up outside the Quetta Press Club where they observed protest from 9am to 5pm on a daily basis. He added that he would issue a statement to the media in Quetta to this effect on Tuesday when they resumed the protest.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2014