Incident

Disappeared Baloch journalist's bullet-riddled body found in Khuzdar

Cause of death

Torture

Details

The bullet- riddled dead body of a prominent Baloch journalist, Javed Nasir Rind, was recovered from Khuzdar district, some 360 KM southeast of Quetta, on Saturday.

According to police officials, area people spotted a dead body lying at Gazgi area and informed police. Policemen rushed to the site and moved the body to Civil Hospital Khuzdar for medico- legal formalities where deceased was identified as Javed Naseer Rind, missing journalist and a former deputy editor of Daily Tawar, an Urdu language independent newspaper.

“The victim has been shot with bullets in the head and chest while marks of torture were also visible on his body,” hospital sources said. The police, after completing legal formalities, handed over the body to the slain journalist’s heirs.

Mr. Rind had been abducted from IT center Hub on September 10, 2011.

His relatives alleged intelligence agencies for his abduction and throwing his tortured dead body. In an editorial The Kidnapping of another Baloch journalist published in The Baloch Hal, this newspaper had observed, “Mr. Rind’s family and well wishers have every legitimate reasons to worry about his forced disappearance because, unfortunately, most of the Baloch journalists who had been kidnapped in the past in a similar pattern were eventually found dead.This kidnapping refreshes our memories about our fellow journalists Lala Hameed Hayatan, Siddiq Eido and Ilyas Nazar, who were all picked up, tortured and killed after several days of mysterious disappearance.”

The kidnapping of Mr. Rind had also been mentioned in a guest blog post written by Malik Siraj Akbar, editor of the Baloch Hal, for the New York-based respected Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) but officials in Pakistan failed to ensure the recovery of the missing reporter.

“Baluchistan is a deadly province for correspondents, where state and non-state actors violently interfere in journalists’ professional work, with the aim of controlling how they and their enemies are portrayed in the media. On September 11, Javid Naseer Rind, the deputy editor of the Urdu-language Daily Tawar, was grabbed by intelligence agents and has not reappeared, his relatives say.

Soon after Rind’s disappearance, the paper’s editor, Khadim Lehri, went into hiding after receiving threats on his life,” Akbar wrote in his guest blog post on the CPJ website last month.

“The brutal murder of Javed Naseer Rind has sent wave of fear amongst journalist community in Balochistan,” said a Quetta-based correspondent affiliated with a national English daily. The Balochistan Union of Journalist (BUJ), which is the largest professional body in the province committed to the rights of journalists and press freedom, has strongly condemned the murder of Javed Naseer and demanded of the government for carrying out investigation into his abduction followed by killing. It may be mentioned here that previously several journalists were abducted and killed from different towns of Balochistan but no accused has been arrested so far.  >

> Read the original article here Source: The Baloch Hal