Baloch activist Abdul Wahid returned to his home in Karachi’s Lyari area on Monday after being kidnapped in July this year, family sources said.
Missing since July 26, activist and writer Abdul Wahid Baloch was taken away by two men in plain clothes while travelling on a bus en route to Karachi with a friend.
At the time of the kidnapping, Baloch’s eldest daughter, 20-year-old Hani, said that that her father, and his friend Sabir Ali Sabir and his two children were returning from an event in Digri, a town in Mirpurkhas district of Sindh.
Quoting her father’s friend, she had said two men in civilian clothes, “one in black and the other in white, came towards the van as it stopped at the Superhighway toll plaza and asked my father’s friend to show his identity card.”
Afterwards, the family and a few friends approached the Gadap Town police station, located right next to the toll plaza. “The police refused to register an FIR and asked us to wait for three days, saying that he might return,” Hani had said. “We then approached the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP), where we submitted an application along with his details.”
Abdul Wahid is a book lover and was a telephone operator at Karachi’s Civil Hospital. He helps Baloch authors publish their works and activists print posters.
Abdul Wahid Baloch is known for participating in events, protest rallies and hunger strikes held by Baloch activists and fishermen for Baloch missing persons. “He was referred to as comrade and used to be a constant fixture at the Karachi Press Club,” a close friend said.
