QUETTA, March 16: The chief of Bugti tribe, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti, is very much in Dera Bugti and has not gone to Iran, it is learnt. Refuting press reports that Nawab Bugti has travelled to Iran, sources in Dera Bugti told Dawn that the veteran politician give an interview to a foreign journalist who had met him in Dera Bugti on Wednesday night.

Official sources confirmed that the nationalist leader was still in the mountains of Dera Bugti.

Meanwhile, Jamhoori Watan Party secretary-general and Senator Agha Shahid Hasan Bugti, who is son-in-law of Nawab Bugti, also denied reports that the JWP chief had left Dera Bugti and crossed into to Iran.

“This is all rubbish, wrong, baseless, concocted and false,” said Shahid Bugti.

He alleged that the government had launched the propaganda to demoralise the people struggling for their rights under the leadership of Nawab Bugti.

“I talk to him (Nawab Bugti) on Wednesday night and he is very much there in his native village,” he said.