February 6, 2026
Staff Report
KARACHI
A Baloch activist based in the UAE fled Pakistan in early 2026 after armed plainclothes operatives raided his family home in Karachi’s Garden East neighbourhood while he was visiting the country, according to a statement made by the activist in support of an asylum claim.
Pervez Murad Muhammad said seven or eight men arrived at the house late at night on February 2, 2026, in dark unmarked vehicles. The men, who had their faces partially covered and carried high-calibre automatic weapons, forced their way into the house without warrants or identification, he said.
Muhammad said he was not present in the house and had gone to see his cousin, when the men arrived. According to his statement, the operatives smashed furniture, subjected women in the household to verbal abuse and physical intimidation, and demanded to know his whereabouts. They accused the family of sheltering a man they described as a fundraiser for terrorists and an enemy of Pakistan, Muhammad said, in an apparent reference to his fundraising work for families of enforced disappearance victims in Balochistan and his support for the Baloch Yekjehti Committee, or BYC.
When they failed to locate him, the men threatened to detain another male family member in his place, according to his statement. Muhammad said he left Pakistan two days later upon learning of the raid and returned to the UAE.
“The use of plainclothes operatives in unmarked vehicles, arriving without warrants in the middle of the night, is a signature method of enforced disappearance operations in Pakistan,” said a lawyer working on Baloch human rights cases, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is not policing. It is hunting.”
Muhammad said the raid followed a pattern of state violence his family had experienced for years. Two of his cousins, Ismail Baloch and Majid Balochi (who was also his wife’s brother), were killed in Karachi in June 2015 and July 2016 respectively in what he and human rights organisations have described as extrajudicial killings. His brother was subsequently granted asylum in the United Kingdom after fleeing Pakistan on similar grounds, he said.
“My name is on a list,” Muhammad said in his written statement. “Going back would not be returning home. It would be surrender.”
Muhammad has not returned to Pakistan since the raid.