QUETTA, 2 September 2006 — Slain Baloch tribal chief Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, whose mutilated body was retrieved from the rubble of a cave, was buried yesterday in the family graveyard at Dera Bugti.
None of his relatives attended the funeral.
Government helicopters transported his body from Kohlu to Dera Bugti on Thursday night. His body, according to district coordination officer Abdul Samad Lasi, “was identified by his glasses and wristwatch.” Lasi displayed to journalists the Baloch leader’s walking stick, glasses and Rolex wristwatch which he said were found on the dead man.
His sealed coffin was buried. No one was allowed to see Bugti’s face.
Only 20 people attended the burial, including government officials and Dera Bugti community leaders. Security forces surrounded the grave as barefoot workers wearing turbans set the coffin into the red earth and covered it with stone slabs.
Journalists at the graveyard demanded the coffin be opened so they could see the body. But Lasi refused, telling reporters it is “illegal to show his face” and that he and a local Islamic cleric had earlier viewed the body and confirmed it to be Bugti’s.
“The body was badly decomposed. It was not in a condition to have been shown,” Lasi said after a short graveside prayer service.
The burial of Bugti, 79, a former government minister and militia leader killed Saturday, enraged relatives and ethnic-Baloch tribespeople. It comes amid heightened tensions in southwestern Balochistan province, where widespread violence and anti-government protests have left at least six people dead, dozens wounded and hundreds arrested.
Bugti’s son, Jamil, accused the government of defying family wishes and quietly burying him in a place where it was unlikely to set off anti-government protests. A large-scale strike shut most shops and canceled public transport services across Balochistan.
“They have killed my father, now they are deciding where to bury him, without his family’s permission,” Jamil said in Balochistan’s capital of Quetta, where the family wanted the tribal chief buried.
Many of Bugti’s relatives, including his children, live in Quetta. A funeral prayer service held for Bugti there earlier this week was attended by at least 10,000 mourners and followed by violent protests and clashes with security forces.
The Pakistani Army said that soldiers late Thursday retrieved Bugti’s body, which they said had been pinned under a boulder that fell on the renegade tribal chief following an unexplained explosion in his mountain cave hide-out. The hide-out came under heavy military attack on Saturday.
Bugti, a former Balochistan governor turned militia leader, fled to the cave in Kohlu, southeast of Quetta, after President Gen. Pervez Musharraf survived a December rocket attack in the area. Officials blamed Baloch tribesmen for the attack. Bugti never claimed responsibility.
Bugti led an often violent campaign to win a greater share of wealth obtained from natural resources, including gas and oil, extracted in Balochistan for the tribespeople. The government accused Bugti of blowing up gas pipelines and railway lines and running a private jail.
Abdul Raziq Bugti, spokesman for the Balochistan government, said authorities did not return the body to Quetta because anti-Musharraf political parties would have used the funeral for their own “political objectives.”
Across Balochistan yesterday, shops were closed and normally bustling streets empty as businesses and public transport services observed a province-wide strike called by opposition groups to protest Bugti’s killing.
— Additional input from agencies
