LAHORE: Security agencies picked up a man from the hostel of the Punjab University on Wednesday, purportedly in connection with the Karachi University (KU) suicide blast case.

Bebgar Imdad, a student of the seventh semester of English Literature in Numl, Islamabad, and a native of Kech, was visiting his relative in Hostel No 7.

On Wednesday morning, PU security guards and other security agencies bundled him into a truck.

A video of the incident was also circulating on social media in which the security agency officials covering their faces are seen bundling him in the back of a Vigo vehicle.

One of the students on the condition of anonymity told Dawn that the security agencies suspected that Imdad might be involved in the recent attack in which three Chinese nationals were killed while four others injured outside the KU’s Confucius Institute.

He said they tried to resist the arrest of Imdad but the personnel told them to stay away and that if the suspect did not have any involvement in the blast, he would be released by evening. By the evening, he said, the security agencies did not release the student.

“Imdad was visiting his cousin and with him, he was to travel to their home town for Eid together,” he said.

The Baloch Student Council strongly protested the “abduction of a Baloch student from the PU” and called it “a continuation of the enforced disappearances and harassment of the Baloch students in the country”.

The council said the Baloch students were being picked up from educational institutes and the profiling of the Baloch students was being done so that the Baloch stopped taking education.

They said the university administration was also harassing the Baloch students in the name of data and details.

A spokesperson for the council said that picking up students was harassment of the Baloch people and students, which is creating an environment of fear among them.

He said the PU administration and agencies would be held responsible if something happened to the student.

He appealed to human rights organisation, and social activists to help them recover Imdad safely and raise their voices against the injustice within the Baloch nation.

A spokesperson for the PU said that the security agencies approached the administration and sought permission to pick the student who they were chasing.

He said Chief Security Officer retired Col Ubaid also accompanied the security agencies to pick up the student staying with their relatives.

Published in Dawn, April 28th, 2022