- In Pakistan’s biggest but most marginalised province, Balochistan, disappearances have become a ritual of terror day after day, concealed behind headlines of development and security.
- Unofficial mass graves are still being discovered throughout the province, validating families’ worst nightmares of the Balochis.
- Mental health workers, already few in Balochistan, report a spreading epidemic of PTSD and chronic depression among young Baloch people.
- Despite repeated calls by human rights organisations, few world powers have denounced Pakistan’s Balochistan policies.
It starts with a knock in the middle of the night.
Sometimes it’s louder, a bang, a forced entry, boots across the tiles, shadows in uniform. Then silence. Families are left behind in frozen fear, gazing at open doors and vacant beds. In Pakistan’s biggest but most marginalised province, Balochistan, this has become a ritual of terror day after day, concealed behind headlines of development and security.
Each gone man or woman is a narrative suspended, some permanently. A mother is waiting for her teenage son, who went out to purchase groceries. A sister clinging to her father’s photograph, praying the courts will care. A son who lays his father to rest with no answers. These are not unusual occurrences—they are the very texture of life in a part of the country devastated not by war, but by erasure.
As the Pakistani state’s hold strangles them, Baloch families are being torn asunder. The wails of parents, wives, and children echo up through streets, courtrooms, and border zones, but the world, as yet, continues not to hear.
The Scale of the Crisis
151 individuals were forcibly abducted and 80 slain in Balochistan alone in March 2025, as per information compiled by local human rights groups and confirmed by impartial monitors. The Frontier Corps, intelligence agencies, and Counter-Terrorism Department are squarely accused of making nightly raids and daytime arrests a standard practice.
These are not faceless victims. Barbers, doctors, mechanics, students, and even schoolboys have disappeared. A BBC-sponsored breakdown of Balochistan Human Rights Council reports found that 64% of enforced disappearances were carried out through direct and violent home raids.
Kalat, Quetta, Gwadar, and Turbat are now hubs of state-backed kidnappings. In rural areas such as Nushki and Nasirabad, mass kidnappings in daylight have been evidenced. Unofficial mass graves are still being discovered throughout the province, validating families’ worst nightmares. The bodies exhibit evidence of brutal torture- burn marks, fractured bones, gunshot wounds- before being left in fields and rivers.
16-year-old Sameer Sudheer was abducted on May 1, 2025, from Zero Point in Pasni while heading to a local shop after school; plainclothes security forces reportedly bundled him into a vehicle, and he hasn’t been seen since.
The Faces Behind the Numbers
Numbers are sterile. Names carry pain. Behind every statistic, there’s a person whose life has been cut in half.
Take 16-year-old Sameer Sudheer, abducted on May 1, 2025, from Zero Point in Pasni. He had just finished school and was heading to a local shop. His family says security forces in plainclothes bundled him into a vehicle. He hasn’t been seen since.
And then there’s Hammal Ali, a 25-year-old barber from Nasirabad. Quiet and famous for his precise haircuts, he was kidnapped from his shop in April. His customers were in the middle of a conversation when uniformed men handcuffed and pulled him away. He wasn’t politically engaged, just an employee earning a living.
In March 2025, dozens were taken from around SBK University in Nushki. Among them were a 6th-grader, Liaqat Baloch, and a 7th-grader, Zia ur Rehman. Schoolbags were abandoned. Families have heard nothing, no charges, and no court orders. “We don’t want revenge,” Liaqat’s mother said. “We only want our children back.”
The Racer Who Was Silenced
Tariq Baloch was Balochistan’s pride once. A Baloch province car racing professional, Tariq, had represented Pakistan in local competitions. He was a believer in remaining neutral and keeping things sporty. Neutrality could not protect him.
In April 2025, his body was discovered lifeless along the Makran coastal highway, mutilated and left behind. Activists of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC) attribute it to another instance of the “kill and dump” policy, where the state forces abduct them, torture them, and then dump them in public to instil fear.
His killing ignited anger throughout Balochistan. Young boys who used to trail him on social media now take to the streets with signs reading “Justice for Tariq.” In their mourning, they are politicising themselves, an unforeseen result of state violence.
Hammal Ali, a 25-year-old barber from Nasirabad known for his precise haircuts, was abducted in April from his shop by uniformed men in front of his customers; he wasn’t politically active, just a worker trying to earn a living.
A Father Lost, A Daughter’s Fight
Dr. Deen Muhammad Baloch, a doctor and politician, was abducted on June 28, 2009, from a government hospital in Ornach, Khuzdar. His 13-year-old daughter, Sami Baloch, was left behind.
Now in her twenties, Sami has emerged as a force unto herself. “I didn’t choose activism,” she states. “Activism chose me the night they took my father.” She’s been threatened, monitored, and detained over the years, but she keeps talking. Her social media accounts chronicle court proceedings, vigils, and protests.
Even after more than a decade of silence, she refuses to let his name be erased.
The Imprisoned Voice of Balochistan
Few have broken the silence concerning Balochistan more than Dr. Mahrang Baloch. A physician by education and activist by necessity, she started speaking out after her father was abducted and never seen again. She started leading the BYC and conducting peaceful protests throughout the province in 2017.
In 2024, her rising power caught the eyes of the world. TIME Magazine included her in the 100 Next most influential individuals. However, at home, her profile identified her as a target.
In April 2025, she was arrested once more, this time detained without charge at Hudda District Prison in Quetta. She has been refused regular access to her lawyer. Her health, her family reports, is declining. But still, her name sparks protests in universities and towns throughout Balochistan.
Tariq Baloch, once Balochistan’s pride and a professional car racer who represented Pakistan, believed in staying neutral; in April 2025, his mutilated body was found along the Makran coastal highway.
A Pattern of Suppression
What started as individual disappearances is now an orchestrated campaign. The evidence gathered by the Baloch Yakjehti Committee and Human Rights Watch indicates a systemic trend: detain, disappear, and discourage.
In August 2024, BYC-organised peaceful demonstrations were brutally dispersed in Quetta and Turbat. Security forces baton-charged protesters and took dozens into custody. Mobile networks were blocked. In the darkness of those telecom blackouts, families received threatening anonymous calls warning them to remain quiet or face similar destinies.
“These are not rogue officers,” an anonymous former intelligence official said to a foreign reporter. “These operations are given the go-ahead from above.”
Death squads, purportedly linked to state-sponsored militias, have also been known to conduct the assassinations of university professors, student union leaders, and children. Legal protections are circumvented with impunity. Antiterror laws, intended to safeguard civilians, are now used on a routine basis to arrest journalists and human rights activists.
The Psychological Toll
For their families left behind, mourning is a suspended sentence.
Aqeel Ahmed was 20 when he killed himself after being abducted and let go weeks later with evidence of torture. According to his mother, he was never the same. He would sit for hours gazing at the walls, weep during his sleep, and react to every knock on the door. The wound went deeper than any flesh.
Mental health workers, already few in Balochistan, report a spreading epidemic of PTSD and chronic depression among young people. Whole neighbourhoods exist in fear of kidnapping. Children are brought up not playing games but anticipating questioning.
“Even when we laugh,” a Khuzdar student said, “it feels like a betrayal. Someone is missing in every family.”
Dr. Mahrang Baloch, a physician turned activist after her father’s disappearance, was arrested without charge in April 2025, denied legal access, and now, despite declining health, remains a symbol of resistance across Balochistan.
A Call for Justice
The international silence is deafening.
Despite repeated calls by human rights organisations, few world powers have denounced Pakistan’s Balochistan policies. Strategic interests, economic interdependencies, and geopolitical balancing have permitted it to act with impunity.
But the voices from the ground are growing louder. From Paris to London, Baloch diaspora members hold regular protests. Human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continue to compile extensive dossiers on enforced disappearances, urging the UN to launch an independent fact-finding mission.
“What we’re witnessing in Balochistan,” said one UN rapporteur, “bears the hallmarks of a slow-motion genocide, if not in numbers, then in method.”
History Will Remember
Balochistan is bleeding silently. And the world, for now, is watching passively.
But history has a way of remembering those who vanished without a trace, and those who stood for them. The photos of boys like Sameer Sudheer, of voices like Mahrang Baloch, and the stories like Tariq Baloch’s will not remain forgotten forever.
What remains to be seen is whether the world will intervene before silence turns permanent.
References:
- Human Rights Council of Balochistan: March 2025 Report
- TIME: Pakistan Jails Baloch Human Rights Activist
- The Guardian: Can one woman unite the Baloch people in peaceful resistance?
- Le Monde: In Pakistan’s Balochistan region, families of victims of repression demand justice
- Paank: January 2025 Human Rights Report
Saisha is pursuing a Bachelor of Diplomacy and Foreign Policy at the JISA, O.P. Jindal Global University. Her areas of interest include economics, business, diaspora studies, and diplomacy. Views expressed are the author’s own.
Aayush Pal 
Abhinav Sharma 
Balaji Subramanian