20 Police Recruits Abducted in Mastung: Armed Men Kidnap Trainees from Kalat Centre on Quetta-Karachi Highway

 

QUETTA: Unidentified armed men have kidnapped 20 under-training police personnel from a passenger van on the Quetta–Karachi Highway in Balochistan's Mastung district, in a brazen highway interception that marks a sharp escalation in the province's widening kidnapping wave, Dawn reported on Saturday.

Main News Report

The recruits, who were undergoing training at the Kalat Police Training Centre, were travelling home for the weekend when armed men intercepted their van in Mastung district, officials told Dawn. A senior Balochistan government official confirmed the abduction on condition of anonymity, saying the personnel were seized while travelling along the Quetta–Karachi Highway on Friday evening.

"Yes, 20 police personnel who were going home for the weekend were taken away by armed men while they were travelling in a passenger van on the Quetta-Karachi Highway in Mastung," the official told Dawn.

According to the official, a group of armed men riding motorcycles and carrying automatic weapons stopped the van and took the recruits away along with the vehicle to an undisclosed location. The kidnappers released the driver and three other passengers travelling in the van, Dawn reported.

Police officials in Mastung also confirmed the abduction, telling Dawn that the abducted recruits belonged to the Levies Force, which has since been merged with the police, and that they were from Balochistan's Rakhshan division.

Security forces have launched a search operation in the nearby mountains to trace the abducted recruits, but no information about their whereabouts had emerged at the time Dawn reported the story on Saturday afternoon. No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction so far.

• Who was taken: 20 under-training police recruits from the Kalat Police Training Centre, belonging to the Levies Force (now merged with the police), from Balochistan's Rakhshan division.
• Where: On the Quetta–Karachi Highway in Mastung district, Balochistan, on Friday evening.
• How: Armed men on motorcycles carrying automatic weapons intercepted the passenger van, seized the recruits and the vehicle, and took them to an undisclosed location; the driver and three other passengers were released.
• Response: Security forces have begun a search operation in the nearby mountains; no word on the recruits' whereabouts, and no group has claimed responsibility.

Background Context

The Mastung abduction is the latest — and by far the largest single seizure — in a series of kidnappings that have shaken Balochistan's administrative and security establishment in recent weeks. The victims came from the province's Rakhshan division, the same region at the centre of a disturbing pattern of officials and personnel being seized off highways.

Just a day earlier, Rakhshan Division Commissioner Asad Ullah Kakar was abducted in Balochistan's Kharan district, Dawn reported — the second senior officer seized in the province within weeks. Kharan Deputy Commissioner Munir Ahmed Soomro had been released safely on October 3 after nearly two weeks in captivity, following negotiations between local tribal elders and the armed men who had abducted him from the Noshki–Kharan highway the previous month.

The pattern stretches further back. On July 21, three excise officials were kidnapped after an attack on a checkpost in Balochistan's Chagai district, according to Dawn. Taken together, the incidents point to armed groups operating with increasing confidence on the province's highways — intercepting official and security personnel in coordinated ambushes.

The Levies Force, to which the abducted recruits belonged before its merger with the police, has long been the backbone of policing in Balochistan's less urbanised districts. The merger was intended to strengthen the province's policing capacity, but the Mastung attack underscores the vulnerability of even security personnel on major highways in the province.

Mastung district sits on the critical Quetta–Karachi Highway, the main road link between Balochistan's provincial capital and the country's largest city and port. Repeated attacks on this corridor threaten not just the movement of security personnel but the province's economic lifeline, as trade and transport depend on the highway remaining safe.

Reactions and Statements

Official confirmation of the abduction came from two directions. The senior Balochistan government official who spoke to Dawn confirmed the number — 20 — and the circumstances: recruits heading home for the weekend, intercepted on the Quetta–Karachi Highway, taken along with their vehicle. Mastung police officials independently corroborated the account, adding the detail that the personnel belonged to the Rakhshan division's Levies Force.

Security forces moved quickly to respond, launching a search operation in the mountains near the interception point. Dawn reported that the operation was under way on Saturday, but that no information about the whereabouts of the recruits had emerged — a silence that will deepen anxiety among the families of the abducted personnel and their colleagues at the Kalat training centre.

No provincial government spokesperson had issued a formal statement at the time of Dawn's report, and no militant or criminal group had claimed responsibility. The absence of a claim of responsibility is significant: it leaves open whether the abduction was carried out by separatist militants, who have a history of targeting security personnel in Balochistan, or by criminal gangs, who have increasingly mimicked militant tactics in the province's kidnapping economy.

The abduction is likely to draw a response from the provincial government in the coming days, particularly given that it follows the Kharan commissioner abduction by barely 24 hours. The back-to-back seizures of a divisional commissioner and 20 police recruits represent one of the most serious challenges to the provincial government's authority in recent years.

Why This News Matters

This is not an isolated crime — it is the largest single abduction of security personnel in Balochistan in recent memory, and it lands a day after the abduction of a divisional commissioner in Kharan. Twenty recruits taken off a major highway, a senior civil servant seized 24 hours earlier, and a deputy commissioner released only after tribal negotiations: together, these incidents paint a picture of a province where armed groups can strike at will on roads that are supposed to be under state control.

For the recruits' families, the hours since Friday evening have been an agonising wait with no information. For the Balochistan government, the abduction is a direct challenge to its writ — the Levies and police are the state's own instruments of order, and if 20 of them can be taken from a passenger van, ordinary travellers on the Quetta–Karachi Highway have little reason to feel safe.

The attack also strikes at a moment when Balochistan's security picture is already under strain. The province has seen repeated assaults on security forces and infrastructure, and the kidnapping of uniformed personnel for leverage — whether political or financial — has become a grim feature of the conflict. The Mastung seizure will intensify pressure on both the provincial and federal governments to demonstrate that they can protect their own personnel, let alone the public.

There is also a national dimension. Balochistan is Pakistan's largest province and the gateway to the country's western border trade; instability there reverberates through the economy and through Islamabad's security calculus. How the state responds to the Mastung abduction — and whether the recruits are recovered safely — will be watched far beyond Quetta.

Future Developments

The immediate priority is the search operation in the mountains near Mastung. Whether security forces can locate the recruits — and whether tribal elders or other intermediaries become involved, as they did in the Kharan deputy commissioner's release — will determine the course of the coming days.

Whether any group claims responsibility for the abduction, and what demands, if any, are communicated. A claim would clarify whether this was a militant operation or a criminal enterprise — and shape the state's response.

Any formal statement from the Balochistan government or the provincial police chief on the abduction, the security of the Quetta–Karachi Highway, and measures to protect personnel travelling through vulnerable districts.

Whether the federal government weighs in, particularly given the back-to-back abductions of a divisional commissioner and 20 police recruits — a pattern that may demand a coordinated provincial-federal response.

The fate of Rakhshan Division Commissioner Asad Ullah Kakar, abducted a day earlier in Kharan, and whether the two cases are linked — a connection that would signal a coordinated campaign rather than opportunistic attacks.

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