New Delhi: A Pakistani anti-terrorism court Monday sentenced Baloch activist Mahrang Baloch to life imprisonment over the killing of a Pakistani police officer during 2025 Quetta protests.
The anti-terrorism court in Quetta handed down the sentence to Baloch, leader of the Baloch Yakjehti Committee (BYC), and activist Sibghatullah. Both were tried through a video link from Quetta district jail. Mahrang has been in prison for more than a year.
State investigators traced the case against Mahrang to March 2025, when militants attacked the Jaffar Express train, killing at least 26 people, Hum News reported. Following a security operation, the bodies of slain attackers were transferred to Civil Hospital, Quetta. Prosecutors alleged that a crowd led by Mahrang stormed the hospital mortuary and removed several bodies, prompting criminal proceedings against her and other BYC members.
According to local reports, prosecutors also claimed that a police officer, Shabbir, died after being struck by a stone during a BYC-led protest in Gwadar. The state held Mahrang and her co-accused legally responsible for the death and charged them under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism laws.
The verdict marks a dramatic turn in the case of one of Pakistan’s most prominent rights campaigners. Over the past several years, Mahrang has emerged as the public face of a movement demanding accountability for alleged enforced disappearances, extrajudicial killings and other abuses in Balochistan.
The BYC has organised long marches, sit-ins and demonstrations that have drawn thousands of participants, particularly relatives of missing persons. Authorities, however, have repeatedly accused the organisation of maintaining links with separatist militants. The group has consistently denied such allegations.
She was arrested on 22 March 2025, under the Maintenance of Public Order Ordinance, days after protests erupted across Balochistan following a police crackdown on demonstrators in Quetta. The protests were organised around allegations of enforced disappearances and other human rights violations committed against ethnic Baloch residents.
Jamil Baloch, a political activist, described the proceedings as a “faceless trial” conducted behind prison walls and lacking transparency.
“The accused were denied the fundamental right to a fair, open defence,” he wrote in a post on Instagram, calling the verdict a form of “political vengeance”.
From prison, Mahrang has repeatedly rejected allegations linking the BYC to militant activity. In a letter published by The Guardian last year, she wrote that enforced disappearances had become widespread across Balochistan and accused authorities of targeting activists and their families.
“It is also important to address a persistent distortion. While the presence of armed groups in Balochistan is an undeniable reality, conflating them with peaceful political movements is deliberate propaganda,” she added.
She maintained that the BYC remained committed to peaceful political activism within Pakistan’s constitutional framework, even as pressure on the movement intensified.
“State violence means no home in Balochistan is safe. Enforced disappearances are widespread; victims are killed in staged encounters; relatives are targeted, and now even women, including Mahjabeen Baloch, a disabled student, and Hani Baloch, a mother of two who was pregnant, are forcibly disappeared. In 2025 alone, BYC documented more than 1,200 such cases of enforced disappearance,” she noted.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)