KARACHI, 11 June 2006 — Former Balochistan Chief Minister Akhtar Mengal was yesterday declared a proclaimed offender by a court in Karachi.
Anti-Terrorism Court Judge Haq Nawaz Baloch while hearing a case declared Mengal a proclaimed offender and ordered the confiscation of his movable and immovable property. Mengal was charged of kidnapping two officials of secret agencies and retaining them in forced custody. The next hearing of the case was fixed for July 4.
Meanwhile, gas supplies to nearly three million people were suspended yesterday after a bomb attack on a key pipeline in the violence-plagued southwestern Balochistan province, police said.
The pipeline was blown up early in the day in the Dasht area, about 25 km east of provincial capital Quetta.
“The miscreants ruptured the pipeline by detonating explosives and supplies to Quetta city and adjoining areas have been completely halted,” police official Hamid Shakeel said.
Disruptions hit about two million people in Quetta alone while more than a million others would be affected in adjoining districts of Pashin, Ziarat, Mastung and Qillat.
An electric pole was destroyed and another damaged by explosives near the site of the destroyed pipeline while police said they defused homemade devices planted on five more poles.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but the government had been blaming tribal militants for the subversive activities in the region who are engaged in a protracted but low-scale insurgency for more political and economic rights.
These elements had stepped up attacks on paramilitary troops and power and gas utilities since December last year when the government announced more oil and gas exploration activities in the impoverished but mineral-rich region.
