Quetta: Unidentified armed men abducted 20 police recruits travelling home from the Kalat Police Training Centre after intercepting their passenger van in Balochistan’s Mastung district, officials said.
A senior provincial government official, speaking to Dawn on condition of anonymity, said the recruits were heading home for the weekend along the Quetta Karachi Highway when the gunmen stopped their vehicle.
The attackers, riding motorcycles and carrying automatic weapons, took the recruits and the van to an undisclosed location. They released the driver and three other passengers, the official said.
Police officials in Mastung also confirmed the abduction. They said the personnel had belonged to the Levies Force, which has since been merged with the police, and were undergoing training at the Kalat centre.
Government officials said the abducted personnel were from Rakhshan division.
Security forces launched a search operation in nearby mountains to locate them. Their whereabouts remained unknown at the time of the report, and no organisation had claimed responsibility.
The abduction follows another incident involving a senior official from the same division. Rakhshan Commissioner Asad Ullah Kakar was abducted in Kharan district a day earlier.
Separately, Kharan Deputy Commissioner Munir Ahmed Soomro was released safely on October 3 after spending nearly two weeks in captivity. Armed men had abducted him from the Noshki Kharan Highway the previous month.
His release followed negotiations involving local tribal elders and the abductors.
In another incident on July 21, three excise officials were kidnapped following an attack on a checkpost in Chagai district.
The report did not establish a connection between those earlier abductions and the seizure of the police recruits in Mastung.
