QUETTA, April 7: The Baloch National Voice (BNV) has termed the production in court of four of “the thousands of missing persons” a “drama” and said the government cannot gain sympathies of the Baloch through such “dramas”.

In a statement a spokesman for the BNV said that production in court of just four of “the 14,000 people languishing in various secret cells should put to shame the interior minister and the chiefs of security forces and intelligence agencies”.

The spokesman said the state institutions had earlier been saying the missing people were not in the custody of security and intelligence personnel but rather living in places like Dubai. “These institutions should now explain whether the four men brought to court on Friday were in state custody or were flown in from Dubai, Kabul, Washington or New Delhi.”

No matter how you look at it, what happened on Friday at the Quetta registry of Supreme Court showed conclusively that thousands of Baloch people were indeed languishing in state cells, the spokesman alleged.

The state was involved in the excesses committed against the Baloch, the spokesman added.