Son of slain Baloch leader Nawab Bugti files plea for exhuming father's body

Karachi: The son of slain Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti has filed an application in an anti-terrorism court in Quetta in Pakistan's restive Balochistan province seeking exhumation of his father's body.

Nawabzada Jamil Akbar Bugti, the son of the Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti who who was killed in a military operation ordered by former military ruler Pervez Musharraf, said in his application that he wanted to know for sure that it was his father who was buried after he was killed in the mountains of Dera Bugti in the Balochistan province in 2006.

Jamil said in his petition that the court order a DNA test be conducted of the body by an international forensics team after the exhumation, according to his lawyer. He has said that none of his family members were present in Dera Bugti during the burial of his father who was killed in a military operation ordered by Musharraf in the troubled Balochistan province.

The son of the former nationalist leader, in a separate application, also requested the court to summon the members of a parliamentary committee who had met Akbar Bugti following the violence in Dera Bugti in March 2005 in which dozens were killed.

The court accepted Jamil's applications and fixed December 30 as the date for the next hearing.

Akbar Khan Bugti who was killed in an explosion in a cave where he had taken refuge during the military crackdown ordered by Musharraf who was president and army chief at the time.

Bugti had led an armed campaign to press for provincial autonomy and a greater share of profits from the provinces natural resources.

An anti-terrorism court in January earlier this year charged Musharraf, former interior minister and Qaumi Watan Party leader Aftab Ahmed Sherpao and former home minister of Balochistan Mir Shoaib Nausherwani in the Bugti murder case. All of them have pleaded not guilty.