Rakhshan Commissioner Asad Ullah Kakar Abducted on Noshki-Kharan Highway, Companion Later Released
Another senior administrator has been kidnapped in Balochistan. Officials say unknown armed men stopped Rakhshan Division Commissioner Asad Ullah Kakar on the Noshki-Kharan highway in the Barshonki area on Thursday and took him away. He was travelling from Quetta to Kharan in a private car.
Stopped on the highway
Kharan police say the attackers blocked the road and seized the commissioner along with the men travelling with him. One companion was later released — some reports identify him as the driver, others as a cashier — and it was he who reached Kharan and alerted the authorities. There has been no word on the commissioner’s whereabouts, and the provincial government had issued no official statement by Thursday night.
The spot is uncomfortably familiar. Only last month, Kharan Deputy Commissioner Munir Ahmed Soomro was abducted from roughly the same stretch of road. Rakhshan is Balochistan’s largest division by area, covering Kharan, Noshki, Chagai and Washuk — vast, sparsely populated districts where help is never close at hand.
No claim of responsibility
No group has claimed the kidnapping so far. Because of the security situation, the commissioner was apparently travelling without a police escort and in a private vehicle, precisely so that his movement would not stand out. It did not save him: the gunmen were waiting on the road anyway.
