QUETTA: Police have arrested a soldier of the Frontier Corps on a charge of killing a university student in Turbat, Kech district, three days ago and started an investigation after registering a case against him.

The officials of the FC South on Friday handed over soldier Shahid Ullah to the Turbat police after conducting an internal inquiry into the killing of the student as District Police Officer (DPO) Najeebullah Pandrani sought his custody for investigations.

“We have registered a case against the FC man on the charge of killing Mohammad Hayat Mirza, a Karachi University student, who belonged to Turbat,” Mr Pandrani said, adding that the suspect had been remanded into police custody for seven days.

Police registered a murder case against the suspect on the complaint of Mohammad Murad Baloch, the brother of the deceased.

Hayat’s father says he was picked from a date orchard and shot dead

Murad Baloch said in his complaint he was an employee of the health department and was on duty on Aug 13 when he was informed that his brother had been killed by the FC in the Absar area. “When I reached the site I found the body of my brother lying in a pool of blood,” he said.

The tragic incident took place after a bomb attack on an FC convoy. Police quoted the father of the deceased as having told them that after the blast the FC mounted a search operation and entered the date orchard where he was working with his son. Two FC men, one of them in plain clothes, took his son Hayat Mirza away, blindfolded him and shot him dead on the road, the father said.

“My father and other people present on the occasion can identify the FC man who pumped eight bullets into the body of my brother,” Murad Baloch told police.

“Hayat Mirza had been working in the date orchard his father took on contract after closure of the Karachi University a couple of months ago due to Covid-19,” Murad Baloch said.

His brother was a final year student and was planning to appear in the CSS examinations, he added.

Earlier, reports suggested that Hayat Mirza was killed when the FC convoy came under a bomb attack in which three personnel of the paramilitary force were injured.

However, in view of witness accounts, DPO Pandrani ordered an investigation and in writing sought the FC soldier’s custody from the high-ups of FC South. The FC officials conducted an internal inquiry into the incident and then handed over Shahid Ullah to the police.

Published in Dawn, August 16th, 2020