Parom, Panjgur: Six Men, One Night, No Warrant

Pakistani security forces conducted house raids in the Hakeem Bazaar locality of Parom in Panjgur district on the night of April 14. Six men were detained and moved to an undisclosed location. Their names are: Sabir, son of Ghulam Hussain. Shareef, son of Ghulam Hussain. Shakeel, son of Ghulam Hussain. Mukhtiar, son of Ghulam Rasool. Hussain, son of Nisar. Maula Bakhsh, son of Sakhi Dad. Three brothers taken from the same house, three others from the same neighbourhood, the same hour. No FIR was filed in their names. No court produced them. No official statement acknowledged the operation.

Two days later, on April 16, the body of Zulfaqar, a 47-year-old shepherd from Gishtagan who had been disappeared from Nehing Zamuran on February 21, was found in Paroom. Authorities described it as an encounter. His family said he was alive when they last knew his location. On the same day, Shahram, 38, also a shepherd, also disappeared February 21, also from the Panjgur area, was killed under identical circumstances and classified identically. The Baloch Yakjehti Committee documented both deaths. Hatim Baloch, 17 years old, a student from Shapatan taken from Paroom on April 5, was also found dead before the week ended. The Human Rights Council of Balochistan recorded 234 enforced disappearances and 87 killings in Balochistan in February 2026 alone. The six men taken on April 14 are not in that count. Their week has not been counted yet.

Read more

The Invoice That Never Was

You walk into a currency changer’s booth in Clifton or a gold shop in Peshawar’s Qissa Khwani Bazaar and hand over rupees. A code is agreed between two men. In Dubai, sometimes the same day, a second man pays out the equivalent in dirhams, which move toward an off-plan apartment or a business account. No wire transfer. No bank record. No FBR trail. The two dealers settle later through goods, offsetting transactions, or other codes on other phones. On April 9, the FIA’s Corporate Crime Circle raided an office in Clifton Block 8. Suspect Mohammad Waqas was taken into custody with Rs4 million in cash. WhatsApp chats documenting hawala-hundi transactions were retrieved from his phone. A case is being registered under the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. The same week, FIA Additional Director General Mujahid Akbar Khan visited the Anti-Money Laundering Circle in Karachi to review progress. He expressed satisfaction. Investigation is ongoing.

Read more

The Grove at the Edge of Everything

A farmer in Loralai, a bottle of olive oil, and Pakistan’s oldest, quietest argument with its own neglect.

The olive tree does not need much. It survives drought. It…

Read more

The week ran from a suburb of Sargodha, where a man confessed to killing his wife and five children, to a rooftop in Karachi where a solar panel bought without a government subsidy, without a state scheme, and without a single official directive was quietly doing what four decades of energy policy had not. Between those two points: Eid arriving on the 20th while fourteen districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were declared highly sensitive and 42,000 police stood at the gates; a Pakistan Day parade cancelled for the first time in a generation because the country had eleven days of crude oil left; and a Kabul hospital on fire while both governments argued about who lit the match. The solar panels kept generating. Six signals. Four shadows, two lights.

Subscribe now

Read more

The week ran from a police lockup in Islamabad’s F-6 to a graveyard in Garhi Yasin where someone had dug up a tomb looking for gold. Between those two points: two men shot dead at a peace council in …

Read more