QUETTA: Eight people, including four Arab nationals and a senior district council official, have been arrested for being involved in illegal hunting of migrating houbara bustard birds in an area near the Pak-Afghan border in Nushki district.

Official sources said on Saturday that the personnel of Frontier Corps deployed at a checkpoint in the Omer Shah area close to the border signalled a convoy of vehicles moving towards the border to stop. When people in the convoy ignored the signal and tried to escape, the personnel opened fire on them forcing them to stop. As a result, one person in the convoy was injured.

The personnel took all the people in the convoy into custody and shifted them to Nushki.

A security official said that the arrested people included four foreigners — three from Qatar and one from Oman. The other four were District Council Nushki’s vice chairman Muhammad Khalil and three local people, he added.

The sources said that the arrested men were going for illegal hunting of houbara bustard because they had no permit from the government for it.

They said the foreigners reached Nushki from Karachi on the invitation of Mr Khalil. They said the foreigners were later shifted to Quetta for further investigation.

The injured was identified as Muhammad Yaqoob, a local man.

Published in Dawn, December 3rd, 2017